


Anima

by j_s_cavalcante



Category: due South
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Case Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:12:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 94,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/j_s_cavalcante/pseuds/j_s_cavalcante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray Kowalski knew he was dreaming, because he was a woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In the Sense of Being a Woman

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by malnpudl and isiscolo, and intended as the other bookend to Isis' Being Ray Kowalski.
> 
> Note: the story involves the theme of genderswitching; however, it is written as serious speculative fiction, rather than kink or crack. Story illustrations can be found on my LJ.

  
Ray was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because he was a woman.

Okay, well, he was still Ray—and Ray was a man, no question about it—but in the dream, he had a woman's body. So that's how he knew, when he thought he woke up, that he wasn't really awake yet.

Besides which, he'd had this dream before.

Well, no, there was something different. He'd never dreamed before that he _woke up_ next to Fraser.

Which, dreaming that in itself wouldn't have been so odd, because they did stakeouts together and pulled all-nighters sometimes, and did witness-protection gigs, and a lot of those times they ended up napping or sleeping side by side on floors or in the car or even on the ground.

But they'd never actually slept next to each other in a bed.

And that's where Ray was now. He was in a big bed, maybe king size, even, in a blue room that he didn't recognize—it wasn't his apartment and it wasn't a hotel, and it wasn't any part of the Consulate—it was early morning and he was waking up, and there was Fraser, in the bed with him...

Okay, there was another thing that was different from his other dreams. Fraser had never been _naked_ in any of Ray's other dreams.

In Ray's dreams, Fraser almost always had the fancy red uniform on, complete with pumpkin pants, Stetson, and Sam Browne belt, and that lanyard thing around his neck that Ray sometimes felt like strangling him with.

Once in a while Fraser had on jeans and a plaid shirt and his leather jacket, and once in a while he had on his brown uniform. But he'd never been naked, like he was now, or at least Ray was pretty sure he was. They were both naked—which, Ray was naked in his dreams a lot, but other people in his dreams usually had clothes on. So that was another weird thing.

Also, Ray had definitely, _definitely_ never dreamed he woke up with naked Fraser half on top of him, with his usually perfect mink-brown hair kind of messed up, and his eyes bright.

And his mouth on Ray, _licking Ray's nipples._

But that's what was happening when Ray dreamed he woke up.

Fraser was licking Ray's girl nipples. On Ray's _breasts._

That kind of freaked him out right there. Ray had dreamed of being a girl before, but it had been sort of hazy and disconnected, and it didn't happen that often.

And until now, he'd never actually dreamed he woke up with real, firm, perky girl breasts on his chest.

With his best friend naked on top of him, licking them.

Wow. That was a trip. Because, and this was another thing, he'd never felt anything this intense before in a dream. His real nipples, his flat, tan, boy nipples, they liked being licked, too—Stella had done that once in a while—but they didn't feel _this_ good. _This_ was wild. The entire peak of each of his dream breasts was incredibly sensitive, and Fraser's mouth on him there made him want to jump out of his fucking skin.

God, it was the kind of dream that was going to make Ray wake up hard and wet and shoving his dick into his fist like a maniac. His dick had to be so hard right now...

Oh. That was weird.

It made sense, but it was weird. He was a girl in this dream, really a girl; therefore, of course he had a complete girl-type body, which meant he did not have a dick. Since this was only a dream, it didn't bother him that much to not have a dick, but it sure was weird.

And interesting. Ray flicked the sheet aside and tried to look down between his legs. He squirmed around so he could see past Fraser's dark, messy head and big broad shoulders, and yeah, wow—Ray was definitely in a girl's body. No dick. Freaky. He'd never had a dream before that was both this weird and felt so real.

He reached his hand down to feel between his legs. Yeah, soft hair there over the mound where his dick should be, and—he reached farther—yup. A pussy. Soft folds of skin—lips—ooh, that sort of tickled in a good way. And, wow, he was getting wet there, really wet and slippery, like a girl...well, yeah, girl parts would be getting wet like girl parts, that made sense.

Fraser chose that moment to come up for air. He lifted his head, smiled a smile that took Ray's breath away, and grasped Ray's hand, pulling it gently away from his girl parts and kissing it. "Let me do that, Ray," he breathed.

Ray's mouth went dry, because, God, it was so _real,_ and to see _that_ look on Fraser's face...it was almost enough to make Ray come without even being touched. Fraser's smile was like being about to burst out laughing, or starting to yell like a maniac because your team just hit a walk-off homer, or wanting to jump out of your skin because what you were staring at was the best damn thing you'd ever seen. And _that_ look, directed at Ray, took his breath clean away.

Fraser's face was flushed and even a little sweaty, and Fraser's lips were red and glistening from licking Ray's tits, and Fraser's big square hand was—oh, my God—sliding down Ray's curved girl belly and touching him between the legs, and that made Ray thrash like a bull in a rodeo.

Yeah, this was a freaky dream, because Ray was a woman and Fraser was kissing his tits and pushing his hand away from his pussy and saying, "Oh, Ray, let me...I want to...you taste so good, you're delightful, let me taste you, let me..."

Wasn't like Ray was going to object to _that._

Fraser slid his pretty, downturned mouth over one breast and then the other and his tongue was snaking out to lick circles around the edges of Ray's nipples, and now one of Fraser's blunt fingers was making the girly bits between Ray's legs reallyhappy, and Ray knew what Fraser was doing. He was doing pretty much the same things Ray used to do to Stella and that Ray thought about doing to other girls, too, and when Ray did those things, he had a goal, he had _intent, _he wanted to, he was going to....

Jesus Christ.

Ray was pretty sure Fraser intended to _do _him in this dream.

Ray's reaction to that was kind of complicated: part of Ray was cheering, _Go, Fraser! _and part of him, the louder part, was shouting, _What the fuck?_

Fraser was great, Fraser was strong and smart and brave and a lot of things Ray admired, but he was also polite and uptight and pissy and _straight_, and while Ray wasn't sure about much in this dream, he was pretty sure he didn't have Fraser confused with Steve McQueen in his head.

But Ray's body, Ray's girl body, was reacting like it thought Fraser was damn hot, and in Ray's head, _What the fuck?_ was definitely starting to take a back seat to _Go, Fraser!_

Ray wondered if he'd accidentally eaten something poisonous. He had to be having hallucinations, because _Fraser doing Ray's imaginary girl body?_ Where did Ray get that one from?

Because, yeah, Ray's boy body thought Fraser was pretty damn hot, too—not that Ray had ever admitted it to anyone but himself—but Ray'd never, not once, thought about being a _girl_ with Fraser giving it to him. He'd maybe wondered once or twice what it would feel like to touch Fraser somewhere under the Mountie uniform or what Fraser's hand would feel like on his dick, but he'd never wondered what Fraser's mouth would feel like on his girl breasts.

"Ray," Fraser breathed across his breasts, and both Ray's nipples perked up into really hard points, like Fraser's voice was the hottest thing he'd ever heard (which maybe it was, Ray's brain was thinking).

Ray had never exactly thought about that before, but he really liked Fraser's voice.

Apparently his subconscious had been keeping a few things from him lately.

He thought about it for a minute, while Fraser left off the sweet torture of Ray's breasts and slid his pouty mouth down Ray's belly instead, and after that Ray couldn't think any more, because Fraser's mouth was going even lower, and lower, and oh my God, Fraser was going to...

...yeah, he was putting his red lips and his talented tongue right _there; _he went right for it, his warm, soft, wet tongue finding that place that Ray suddenly realized he'd been dying for Fraser to touch.

Fraser's tongue there made Ray tingle and gush more wetness and _want_ more. Fraser licked him right over that spot that Ray would bet was his clit, and, wow, no wonder Stella had liked Ray's tongue there so much. It reminded him of having the head of his cock licked, only it was even more intense.

He didn't have a cock at the moment, but he had something that felt just as good—and oh God oh God, Fraser's _tongue _was on it and under it and around it, and Fraser was murmuring _Ray, Ray, _and one of his fingers was finding its way into the opening of Ray's pussy, pushing inside him and thrusting, touching him everywhere in there, and he was so wet, so wet, and he was so open to Fraser....

Ray couldn't help himself. He dug his heels into the mattress, and moaned, and arched his crotch up into Fraser's mouth. No point in arguing with this dream, he figured. Sex was sex even if it was imaginary and in the wrong body, and Ray would be an idiot if he didn't just go with it.

Fraser looked up at him, his eyes so bright, and smiled _that_ smile again, and brushed the pad of his thumb up over Ray's clit and sank his tongue deep in Ray, so hot and so dirty it made Ray's heart thump. And that was it: Ray was spilling over, he was shouting, he was sobbing, his voice high and strange in his ears, but he didn't care. He tingled all over, and warmth swept over him in waves. He was contracting around Fraser's finger and throbbing against Fraser's lips.

It was weird to feel it like this, from inside out, but also cool. He'd always wondered what it felt like to Stella, and now he probably had sort of an idea.

His subconscious was pretty amazing, he thought, drifting on the good feelings and the afterglow and everything. Fraser's fingers and tongue were gentler now, but they were still on him, still touching him and stroking him until Ray really, really couldn't take any more and he put his hand on Fraser's head and stroked his messy hair and earned another of those _smiles._

Fraser eased off, then, and climbed back up next to him, and Ray probably expected to maybe wake up at that point, or he expected Fraser to drop down next to him and sleep, but neither thing happened.

Instead, Fraser put his arms around Ray and pulled him close and started kissing him. On the mouth. With his mouth still wet from between Ray's legs, salty and sweet and...weird, that was how Ray tasted as a woman, huh?

Ray put his tongue out and licked his girl wetness off Fraser's lips. Wow, if there was something he never, ever would have believed he'd dream up, that was probably it right there.

Still, for a kinky dream it had felt really good, and he still wasn't awake, so this dream probably had something more to tell him.

Maybe Dream Fraser would tell him after he took his tongue out of Ray's mouth.

Except instead of winding down, Fraser seemed to be winding _up._

His body was _big_ and solid and warm against Ray's skinny form, which, being female at the moment, was even skinnier than usual, except in a few key places.

Fraser seemed to realize he was kind of heavy on Ray, and he lifted himself up and over Ray, and it wasn't till that moment that Ray realized that _oh—_yeah, there was a dick here, and even though it wasn't Ray's, it was very interested in the proceedings, to the point where it was butting Ray in the belly while Fraser was kissing him.

Ray couldn't help being curious; he'd seen Fraser naked, yeah, but not _hard...._ This was just Dream Fraser, anyway, really only a part of Ray's subconscious, right? It wasn't like he was really _looking._ So when Fraser finally stopped kissing him to breathe, Ray looked.

And, oh, yeah, that was a hard cock, all right, heavy and red and plump. It looked real firm at the moment, and it was even dripping a couple drops of clear precome. Ray thought of Dief salivating and he almost laughed.

Fraser apparently misunderstood Ray's smile, because he caught one of Ray's hands in his and urged it down towards his cock.

Oh. Yeah. It did kind of work that way, didn't it? Ray'd gotten his, and now Fraser wanted to...

Ray's hand was on autopilot. It went where Fraser directed it, and it closed around Fraser's erection, and yeah, wow, that was a dick. It felt good in Ray's hand. He'd been dreaming being a girl for quite a while now, and it felt good to have a dick in his hand again, even if it wasn't really his.

Oh, wait. It probably was his, right? He was probably holding his own in his sleep, what with all this vivid dreaming.

There was just one problem with that.

Ray didn't have a foreskin. But Fraser did. And Ray was definitely feeling the extra skin on Dream Fraser, noticing how it made everything a little slipperier and slidier, even though it didn't look all that different with Fraser erect.

Thing was, how did Ray know what a foreskin felt like? How did he know what Fraser's cock would feel like in his hand? He didn't even know how it looked erect, so his subconscious couldn't be translating the visuals to how it felt.

Yeah, Ray'd gotten an occasional glimpse of Fraser's body, but it wasn't like he'd really looked_, _'cause you didn't do that to your buddy; you didn't stare at him and make him feel self-conscious or, God forbid, maybe even threatened.

And a glimpse wasn't enough to be able to say, yeah, this is what he'd look like hard, this is what he'd feel like. Your subconscious would make him feel like you in your own hand, wouldn't it? That would make sense.

But Fraser felt different. That was weird. Fraser's hard-on, it turned out, wasn't quite as big as Ray's, but it felt a little harder, somehow. Fraser's balls were bigger, though, and really smooth, with almost no hair on them, which Ray wouldn't have expected. Fraser's dick was redder than Ray's, too, and most of all there was the foreskin. Ray hadn't really ever seen one up this close and personal, and he hadn't realized they stretched back like that and almost seemed to disappear when an uncut guy got hard.

All in all, this was one hell of a vivid dream, the kind of dream you wouldn't forget, the kind that you might have to analyze for years to figure out what the hell it was trying to tell you.

Maybe in this dream Ray didn't have a cock, but Fraser sure did, and Ray's hand was making intimate with it, Ray's hand was stroking it up and down, slow, and then a little faster, and Fraser was loving that, to judge by the way his breaths were puffing out, really short and quick, and his eyelids were fluttering closed on the downstrokes.

Ray was really getting into it when Fraser's hand closed over his again and tugged it gently away.

"Ray, please, I'd like to make love to you," Fraser murmured in his ear. "Are you...would you like that now?"

God, he was so polite, even in bed. "Well, jeez, I think that's what you're doing, Frase," Ray said. That was a little weird, too, that they'd spent all this time doing stuff and not talking, and then all of a sudden they both came out with full sentences.

Only Ray's voice still sounded funny. Too high and...

Oh, yeah. Girl. Right.

Funny, he'd have thought he'd probably have forgotten about the voice.

Fraser's eyes snapped open, then. "Frase?" he said. "Ray, you haven't called me that at home in years."

Home?_ Years? _They'd only known each other about a year and a half, so what the hell did Fraser mean? And home, what was that? Ray had a home, if you could call it that, but Fraser didn't; Fraser lived in his damn office on the other side of town. So it was Ray's turn to raise an eyebrow. But he figured he could let that stuff go, because since when did things make sense in dreams?

"Um. So what are you asking?" he said, figuring he didn't need to call Fraser by his name at this point anyway. Considering what they were doing.

"I'm asking if I may, er, penetrate you now," Fraser said.

Okay, Ray's other eyebrow went up, because, _penetrate? _Fraser actually talked like that in bed?

"You're saying you want to fuck me?" Ray said, feeling on the verge of laughing, because this was seriously, seriously too weird.

Fraser's eyes closed again and he actually blushed. Not like he was embarrassed, either. Like he got off on hearing Ray say that. He opened his big blue eyes and, wow, they'd gone _hot. _"Ray..." he breathed. "Yes. I would like that very much."

Ray couldn't hold in the laugh that had been threatening. Because Dream Fraser was going to fuck Ray in Ray's _pussy? _Jeez_._

"Is there...something humorous about that, Ray?" Fraser whispered to him, with his mouth against Ray's ear and his breath tickling Ray there and making him sort of shiver.

"Well, yeah, Fr...uh...yeah. 'Course it is. You, me...like this." Of course, since this Fraser came straight—uh, so to speak—from Ray's subconscious, he might not actually get the joke.

"I'm sorry, I must have missed something," Fraser said, but he sounded slow-motion and only half like he was listening, which, Ray got that, because Fraser's cock was poking at him again, and it felt really goddamned hard at this point. Fraser might be a Super Mountie, but Fraser was also a guy, and half his brains had to be in his dick right now. He probably wasn't thinking much beyond: Fuck. Ray._ Now._

Well, why not, Ray thought. He'd liked feeling Fraser's finger in there. It would be kind of cool to know what his cock felt like inside Ray, right? And it wasn't like Fraser could hurt him, because it still was just a dream, after all.

"Might be interesting," Ray heard himself saying aloud.

"If you don't want me to, just say so," Fraser said, sounding just a touch snappish.

Ray got that, too. He'd feel that way in Fraser's place, if he was about to fuck a girl and she started this confusing discussion instead. Hell, it had happened. With Stella it had happened more than a few times.

If this was real, Ray'd probably take pity on Fraser and fuck first, talk later, if at all. But this wasn't real, and Ray had to say something.

"Okay, look," he told Fraser. "I'd like to know what it feels like. If it's half as good as what you already did, it'll be totally worth it. And I'm game; you know me, I'll try anything. But...see..." He gestured with one hand. "This has been going on a really long time now. Which, that is weird. Maybe I should hold off. 'Cause, I don't know, maybe there's some kind of psychological damage or something you can get from this much dreaming. It feels too real to be normal."

That stopped Fraser. His eyes snapped open, he raised himself a little, and he peered at Ray with eyes gone narrower. "Ray, that made no sense," he said in a wary voice.

"Yeah, I know." Because how could it make sense to a dream partner who was himself part of the dream? Ray realized he had to take it slower. He reached up around Fraser's shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze. "Sorry. Listen, uh, pretend I don't know the answers, okay? Let me ask you...why do you want to fuck me?"

Fraser seemed startled, but he sighed, and answered, "Many reasons, Ray." He was still peering at Ray with that narrow-eyed look, like Ray was asking trick questions.

"Try me."

"I love to be inside you," Fraser said. "I feel...complete. At home. Wanted."

Okay, that knocked Ray for one. "We've done this before?" Ray didn't remember it, but he knew recurring dreams happened. Maybe he just had blanked on them, or something.

"Well, of course, Ray. Regularly. Since we fell in love."

"Love? Well, yeah, you know I love you, Frase, but..."

"And I you, Ray. Are you feeling...have you had some memory loss you haven't told me about? Did you experience any blows to the head you neglected to mention? I should think Lieutenant Welsh would have told me if you'd been injured on the job."

"Well, yeah, I've had blows to the head; you know that, but nothing recent." Not that Ray knew of, anyway. He swallowed nervously. "I'm not, like, hallucinating you, am I, Frase?"

"I don't think so," Fraser said. "I'm definitely here. But you are saying some rather strange things."

"No, I mean, I'm not really in the hospital and, uh, in some kind of coma, am I? You'd know." Of course his subconscious would know.

"You're not in hospital. You're in our home. In our bed."

"Our bed?" See, this was just a few shades too weird to be a normal dream.

"Well, yes, and if there had been an injury that serious, Lieutenant Welsh would certainly have notified me. In fact, I'm certain he'd have had you taken to hospital."

Ray made a circle in the air with his forefinger, counterclockwise, rewinding. "Back to the our home, our bed thing," he said. "What's that?"

"Our home. Our bed. Ray, I don't understand—"

"We're like that, huh?"

"Like what, Ray?"

"Like, you know. Partners. _Partners._ We live together?"

"Of course we live together. Ray, you're clearly having a memory lapse of some kind. It could indicate a serious injury or illness."

"Nah, I'm fine," Ray said. All he needed was Dream Fraser panicking, right? The dream would quickly become a nightmare, and Ray did not need that. "Did you forget I told you to pretend I didn't know the answers?"

Fraser swallowed hard. "Oh. Yes, I suppose I did. Forgive me, I'm afraid my attention was somewhat..."

"Yeah, I get that. I know what that's like," Ray said, sliding his hand back down between their bodies to get a grip on Fraser's cock again. It was still pretty hard; Ray was impressed. "So okay, why do we live together?"

"Ray, I don't understand why you'd interrupt...er, what we were doing...to ask a series of very confusing philosophical questions." Fraser sounded a little peeved, which Ray could understand. He took pity on Fraser and stroked him a little more firmly, feeling Fraser's cock get really hard again in his hand, really fast.

" 'Cause I'm a philosophical kind of guy—uh, person," he said. "My subconscious must have a reason for all this, so I figure I'll ask it."

"We live together because we want to," Fraser said on a long sigh. "Because we love each other and want to be together."

"So you, I mean, the real you, wants to live with me?"

"The real me." Fraser cleared his throat. "Well, as far as I know, I _am_ the real me, so I think I can confidently say, yes, I do want to live with you, and I do live with you, and I love you, and I feel fortunate beyond the telling that you consented to become my wife."

_"Wife?"_

"Well, you _are_ my wife, Ray."

Okay, so there was a line after all, even for the guy who would try anything between consenting adults that didn't hurt too much. This here, this was officially too fucking weird, even for Ray. He had to wake up _now._ Because he ran around like Fraser's sidekick half the time, he put up with Fraser correcting him and being perfect at everything, he let Fraser risk his life in wildly bizarre ways—and he kept coming back for more.

All Fraser had to do was give Ray those big, innocent eyes and that hopeful, trusting look, and Ray'd follow him into hell and thank him for the privilege. Sometimes he wondered why he didn't just ask Fraser to push him up against the nearest wall and fuck him up the ass instead—it'd be safer.

Maybe that thought had seeped into his subconscious somehow, and now he was dreaming that Fraser wanted to fuck him. Which, by itself, that was not such a bad idea. Ray could go for that. It would sure beat throwing him into Lake Michigan regularly; Ray could vouch for that.

But his wife? His fucking _wife?_ The little woman? _Mrs. _Fraser? Christ, it was worse than Ray'd thought. His subconscious was talking loud and clear now, and what it was saying was scaring the hell out of him.

He was out of here, right fucking now.

He tried to kick Fraser off him—lucky for Dream Fraser he remembered to let go of his dick first—and, ow, his foot connected with Fraser's shin, but Fraser was solid_,_ like a boulder, and Ray hardly budged him.

"Ray!" Fraser yelped. "That hurt!"

"Well, get off me," Ray practically shouted in his face. "Get the fuck off me right now!"

Fraser obediently rolled off Ray and lay there on his side, his face gone white. But Ray was ripping mad; he was yelling right in Fraser's face. "I'm nobody's fucking _wife!_ Say that again, I'm gonna knock your fucking teeth out, you hear me?"

"Ray, what's the matter?" It was almost a sob. Fraser looked stricken. He looked like he'd lost his best friend.

Oh, Jesus.

Or like he'd said he loved his best friend and wanted to be with him, and his best friend responded by kicking him and threatening to knock his teeth out.

Guilt flooded Ray. "Oh, God, look—I didn't mean that."

"I certainly hope not," Fraser said in a shaky voice.

Ray felt like a total asshole. He sucked—how could he hurt Fraser like this? He hated feeling this way.

But why did Fraser get to guilt-trip him even in a dream?

"God, I'm, sorry, Fraser. I just...jeez you're not even real, and you give the same guilt trips the real you does. Look, I'd love to stay and discuss this, but I think something weird is going on in my brain. Maybe I'll have this dream again and we can finish, but meanwhile, look...I love you, too, and...and we'll talk about it, okay? In real life. I'm out of here, I'm going to wake up now." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Wake up. Wake up, Ray. Now's a good time. Wake up."

Somebody was shaking his shoulder. Which, that would maybe be a good sign, except Ray had gone to sleep alone in his apartment, so if somebody was waking him up, he either wasn't in his apartment, or somebody who wasn't supposed to be here _was._ Either way, it couldn't be good.

He opened his eyes. It was Fraser, shaking his shoulder. Fraser, naked and in bed with him, and—Ray looked down at himself cautiously—oh, shit. He still had a woman's body. This couldn't be happening. Ray was stuck in the weirdest dream he'd ever had and he couldn't wake up. It was like fucking _Groundhog Day_.

Except it wasn't even _that_ normal.

Not once did Bill Murray ever wake up as a woman on that day.

"Ray, you're ill," Fraser said. "Something's really wrong. You just told me I wasn't real and that you had to wake up."

"Yeah, well, obviously I didn't wake up," Ray said sharply, pulling back a little when Fraser winced. "Okay, look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to yell at you. But every time I open my eyes I'm still in this body and you're here, all...naked like that, and we were...um, the stuff we were doing, it isn't stuff you and me would be doing, you know? In real life."

"Where would you be if not in your body, Ray?" Fraser said, still sounding like he was trying to puzzle it out.

"Not in this body," Ray said. "In my own body, my male body. You know."

"I'm afraid I don't," Fraser said. He sighed deeply. "It does sound as though you've been dreaming. But you appear to be awake now."

"Can't be." Ray shook his head. "Frase, look at me. I'm a girl."

"Well, yes, I see that, Ray. Although you usually refer to yourself as a _woman."_

"Now that—that is not true. I have _never_ referred to myself as a woman, Fraser, because I have never _been_ a woman. I'm a guy. Was born a guy. Grew up a guy. I still am a guy...except in this particular dream. Which has stopped being funny, so if you're a part of my subconscious, please tell it to wake me the fuck up, now. I'm getting kind of impatient here."

"You're already awake, Ray." Fraser put his hand down and pinched Ray's thigh, hard.

"Ow! Hey, stop that."

"You're awake," Fraser said, sounding sure. He even sounded calm. But the deep crease above the bridge of his nose betrayed him.

"I can't be."

"Ray, why don't you try sitting up? That is, if you feel you can. If not, I can take you to hospital. Or perhaps call an ambulance..."

"No." Ray lifted a hand. "No. I'm okay. I'm okay, let me...sit up." He did, pulling himself up easily, obviously not sick, just...weird. Fraser's hand was on his back, supporting him, but he didn't need it. He was fine.

Except.

He raised his right hand and looked at it, both sides. It looked a lot like his real hand, except it was much smaller. It had long fingers like his; they were just skinnier. He looked at his arm. Skinnier! Fuck...how could his arms be any skinnier than they were already? He made a fist. He had pretty good muscles—for a girl. But that wasn't saying much, was it?

He looked down at his body. Yeah, the same equipment he'd taken inventory of earlier. Breasts. Pussy. No dick.

The evidence sure was suggesting he was a girl.

And he felt really, truly, wide awake. Even without coffee.

"This can't be happening." He got out of the bed and stood up. He was in a blue bedroom he didn't recognize. He looked around. "Um. Where are we, Frase? This don't look like a hotel." He peered out the window—it looked like Chicago out there, though he didn't immediately recognize the street. It could've been his neighborhood, though. "Bed and breakfast?"

Fraser shook his head. "We're in our home, Ray. We live in a house several blocks from the 27th District..."

"When did we move in?"

"Before we, er...before the event that so upsets you. The one that I mustn't mention on threat of damage to my teeth."

Ray waved a hand. "I'm sorry. I'm not gonna hit you, Fraser. I was just...kind of freaking out. You can give me the straight answer."

"All right." Fraser was watching him very carefully, like Ray would watch a nutjob perp while they were waiting for the mental hospital to admit him. "All right. We moved here shortly before we were married."

"So we're married," Ray said.

"That's right. Since last September."

"Huh. I been a woman all that time?"

"You were born female and have been all your life, Ray."

"You're sure about that?"

"Reasonably certain. Your mother does show off those photographs taken when you were a week old."

"Oh, God, the naked baby pictures." Ray closed his eyes and shuddered for a second. "I hate those things."

"So you've often said. But the photos clearly show the external characteristics of a female. You do menstruate, and we've had no cause to suspect fertility problems. Do you have some reason to question your gender?"

Ray opened his eyes. "I got no idea what you're talking about. You're saying my mom's baby pictures of me, they show a baby _girl?"_

"Well, yes."

"See," Ray said, pointing a finger at him. "There's something wrong with that. Because I do not remember ever being a woman until I woke up this morning. Those baby pictures I hate? I've seen them a thousand times. She's shown them to all my relatives and friends at least once. And in those pictures? I have a cute little dick. Actually not so little. And cute little baby balls, Fraser. I. Am. A. Guy."

It probably would have been more convincing in a deeper voice. He looked down at his body again, which totally gave him the lie, and his throat felt kind of choked up, like he wanted to cry.

He wanted to punch something, but it was either Fraser or the wall. He wouldn't do that to Fraser, and the wall might break Ray's little girly knuckles. Fuck. Crying was beginning to look like not such an impossible option.

"Perhaps some sort of amnesia might account for it," Fraser said quietly. He sounded kind of choked up, too.

"Fraser, there is no _amnesia_ that can make you believe you were one sex all your life when you were really the other."

"Well, there might be mental...conditions...that could have that effect."

"You're saying I might be crazy?"

"I'm thinking more along the lines of some unusual injury, Ray. You've taken some hard blows to the head in the course of your police career. Sometimes symptoms can show up years later."

"It ain't that, Frase. My head's fine." He thought for a minute. "Wait. Wait a second. I don't even know what else is different. One, there's being in a woman's body, which is not mine, Fraser. I don't know this body; I never saw it before this morning. B, there's being _married_ to my partner, who is a guy and a Canadian, and that's a trip, I'll tell you. But we'll get to that later.

"Three, there is this room, which I don't recognize, and—surprise, you say it's our place? Well, guess what? I'm going to have to ask you where the bathroom is, Fraser, because I don't know. I don't know what the kitchen looks like, I don't know the address. I'm not even sure which neighborhood this is. I've never seen the rest of this house."

He glanced at Fraser, but Fraser just looked worried and confused and really, really sad. Ray didn't like putting that look on Fraser's face, but at the moment he had bigger problems. He sighed. "Is there a mirror in here somewhere?"

Fraser pointed across the room. "Open that closet door."

Ray found a mirror fastened to the back of the door. He swung it wide, and it caught the light from the window, and he found himself staring into a pair of gray-blue eyes he recognized—in a face that he didn't recognize.

Ray didn't have a sister, but if he had one, she'd probably look a lot like the naked woman he now saw in the mirror.

 


	2. Who's That Girl?

  
She had blond spiky hair like his, only a bit longer than he usually wore it. She had a little stud earring in one ear and two in the other. Huh. Her face was heart-shaped, just like his, and very fine boned; her chin was even more pointed than the one he only shaved every third day or so, and of course it was completely smooth.

And her body—wow. She was long and slender like him, only with perky, wide-set breasts that looked really nice—not big, but firm and pretty—and a slim waist; slender hips a little more rounded than his straight, guy hips; and long, long legs that were curvy in all the right places. She was probably only a few inches shorter than he used to be.

Her arms were long and slender, too, though he could see the shapely curves of a bit of muscle in the shoulders and biceps, which he figured wasn't bad for a girl. Her hands were long-fingered like his, but way less knobby, and...wow. He held up his left hand. Yeah, there it was, a plain gold band—a wedding ring. It gave Ray shivers, having a wedding ring on his hand again, even if it wasn't really his hand.

In the mirror, he saw Fraser come up behind him, real slow and careful, like he thought Ray might shatter if he startled him. Slowly, Fraser wrapped his arms around Ray's waist, and Ray let him. And, God, those were Fraser's arms tight and warm around Ray's naked middle, and the feeling was so beautiful and so perfect that Ray stopped shaking and felt himself relax just a little.

He looked at them together in the mirror. Fraser was about three inches taller than him now. That made Ray, uh, about five-eight or five-nine. Pretty tall for a girl, but shorter than he was used to being.

"What do you think?" Fraser asked very softly.

Ray touched his breast, then his cheek. "Huh. She's pretty hot."

Fraser cracked a very small smile. It had to fight its way through the worry on his face, but it was there. "I've always thought so."

"Always?"

"Absolutely."

Warmth flooded Ray's chest just like it had the day of the eclipse, when Fraser told him he found him attractive. Without thinking, Ray turned in Fraser's arms and hugged him back. God, he needed this hug. He felt Fraser sigh against his neck and pull him close.

Ray closed his eyes. If he ignored the feeling of his breasts pressing against Fraser's chest, he could almost pretend he was back in his male body and holding Fraser like this. What a trip that would be, huh? Cautiously, he leaned his head against Fraser's broad chest. Fraser's heartbeat was thrumming under there, boom, bup-boom, bup-boom, bup-boom...a comforting sound, and one he'd desperately listened for more than once when they'd pulled some crazy stunt on the job and almost gotten themselves killed.

Fraser's heartbeat sure sounded the same.

Fraser's big hand felt the same, too, when it started rubbing circles on Ray's back. Ray's breath caught in his throat. Fraser had done that when Ray came out of Beth Botrelle's house and totally lost it in the car. He hadn't been able to drive home; he'd bawled like a little kid, and Fraser had been there for him. Never said a word, but _touched _him, _held _him till he stopped freaking out, which took a hell of a long time.

 "Did it happen to her, too?" he said before he even realized it.

"Did what happen?"

"Did your...wife, did she make this mistake that almost got this woman executed, this cop's wife named..."

"Beth Botrelle?"

"Yeah. I guess that's my answer."

"Yes, and yes. I held you just like this."

"Were we, um, I guess we were cop partners then. Were we, uh...dating, too?"

"We were already married. That incident took place last winter."

"So when did we meet?"

"Shortly after Louis Gardino was killed in a tragic incident, you were assigned to fill the gap at the 2-7."

"I remember that funeral. I was there. Every cop in the city who could be spared from duty was there. I think that might've been the last time I wore my uniform."

"It was a difficult day," Fraser said. The pain of the memory was clear in his voice.

"Yeah," Ray said. "One of the suckier things about being a cop. Bad guys won one that day, we lost." He hugged Fraser a little tighter.

"He was a good man."

"I knew him a little. Bowled with him once or twice. He was a prick, but I kind of like that in a guy."

"He died in Ray Vecchio's stead," Fraser said. "I realized too late someone might have rigged the car to explode. I called after him, but he...."

"I know. I read the whole file."

Fraser pulled back and looked at him, and Ray noticed all over again how _blue_ Fraser's eyes were.

"You remember some things but not others," Fraser said. "We should go back over the recent past to identify where your memory gaps are."

"I keep telling you there's no gaps," Ray said. "I know _who_ I am and I know my history. I just don't know _where_ I am."

"Ray—" Fraser not only didn't look convinced, he looked like he was about ten minutes from calling the guys in the white suits. That was all Ray needed. Shit. He'd better try a different approach.

"All right, look. We'll play it your way—which, don't we always? But there's one thing I don't get. If I been a girl all my life, how come you call me Ray?"

Fraser looked startled. "It's your name."

"You say I was born in a girl's body, but my parents named me Raymond? How's that?"

"Well, no. They named you Stephanie Rachael, but you go by Ray."

"R-A-Y? That's a guy's nickname."

"No. R-A-E."

"Huh. Stephanie. Jeez." He rolled his eyes. "My mom wanted to call me Stephen, but Dad overruled her. I used to be mad about that, but it don't bother me any more, because, do I look like a Steve to you?"

Fraser made a little sound like an almost-laugh. "Er, no, you don't."

"I mean aside from the, you know, the being-a-woman-at-the-moment thing."

"Well, you did say the same thing about the name 'Stephanie.' You said you didn't look like a Stephanie, and you thought it was too feminine."

"Too girly."

"Yes."

"Yeah, I get that."

"What do you remember as your name?"

"Stanley Raymond Kowalski."

"Stanley Kowalski? Like the character in the Tennessee Williams play?" Fraser sounded just as disbelieving as he had that day in the crypt.

"Like the guy in the Brando movie."

"Well, yes, they made it into a movie. It was a play first."

Ray shrugged. "Dad was a big Brando fan. Not me. With me it was always Steve McQueen. So you see why I go by Ray. R-A-Y, Ray."

"Oh," Fraser said like there wasn't anything else _to_ say. Which there wasn't, because Fraser didn't believe him and Ray didn't have any damn _proof,_ and Ray's stomach churned as he realized if he didn't convince Fraser, he probably had no hope of ever solving this.

Ray let go of him, then, because he really had to go to the can, and he didn't want to get into asking any tougher questions while they were both naked.

Fraser showed him where the bathroom was, and Ray was relieved to see it wasn't pink or lavender but just neutral colors. It was pretty neat, but that was probably Fraser's doing, because Ray was generally a slob and would at least have knocked a towel on the floor and left the toothpaste uncapped.

He switched the light on, but he didn't close the door; he just went over to the can, and without thinking he put the seat up and stood facing the wall. He really had to go, bad. And he was suddenly at a loss. He didn't have a dick. How was he supposed to do this? Oh. He lowered the seat and turned around to sit down, and there was Fraser, framed in the doorway, his face gone white as milk, looking totally staggered.

Wounded. "Oh, my God."

"Deep breaths, Fraser," Ray said, and settled on the toilet and took some deep breaths himself.

This body knew what to do, even if he didn't. He peed and then he started to stand up, only to feel wetness trickle down the insides of his legs. "Shit! Well, I mean, piss, anyway. Damn it. I have to..." He grabbed some toilet paper and dabbed at all the places that felt wet. Jeez, chicks had to put up with this? It sucked.

He flushed and went to wash his hands, and in the mirror he could see that Fraser was still white, except where his cheeks were blushing deep pink in two little spots. "Christ, Fraser, you and me pee together all the time. What's the matter? You look like you saw a ghost."

Fraser was shaking his head. "I don't pee with Rae—er, Rachael," he said. "And I'm not seeing any ghosts." He glanced around. "At least, not at the moment."

Yeah, at least some things hadn't changed. Fraser was still a freak. "Then what...?"

Fraser swallowed really hard, like there was a lump the size of a softball in his throat. "Ray. Raymond," he said, like the words _hurt_ him. "You're really not my Rae."

Ray nodded. "Like I been telling you all along," he said, very gently.

"I believe you," Fraser said, and those words should not sound so deeply _tragic._

But they made Ray feel better, even though Fraser still looked so stricken. "Well, good," Ray said, letting out his breath, relaxing a little. "What, did it hit you all of a sudden?"

"You might say that," Fraser said in a hoarse whisper. He gestured at the toilet. "You really didn't...your first instinct was to stand..."

"Yeah. Because I been doing that with a dick for thirty-seven years. Give or take."

"There's been some sort of transference," Fraser said. "You're from...somewhere else. And my Rae, she's..."

Ray was nodding. "I'm guessing she's in _my_ body, in _my_ life." Jesus Christ, this was like a _Star Trek_ episode or something. He hoped it wasn't the _Twilight Zone_, because then he'd be really fucked. "She probably woke up just as confused as I did, but she probably realized it wasn't a dream sooner. You weren't there, for one thing."

"Was anyone else there? Where would you have been?" Fraser said, sounding urgent about it, although there was absolutely nothing anybody could do right now.

"In, uh, in my apartment. I live alone. Not far from here, if we're near the station. Frase, don't worry. I've got you on the speed dial, press 1 for Fraser. And she's...she's me, you know? She'll figure it out."

He clapped a hand on Fraser's bare shoulder. "C'mon. Show me where my clothes are, and then show me the kitchen. If I don't get some coffee pretty soon, I'm going to turn into Ray the ugly swamp monster, and then we're _really_ going to have a problem."

That got Fraser chuckling, just a little, but a little was good, and that made Ray relax a little, too. He must've had endor-whatsis left in his system from the sex, because he'd probably be freaking out otherwise.

He shook his head to clear it. He needed coffee, and then he and Fraser needed to figure this thing out so Ray could get back to his own life. Ray might look like a girl in this weird universe, but he was still a detective, and he had one hell of a mystery to solve.

Fraser ended up getting Ray one of Rae's bathrobes and hauling him into the kitchen to feed him coffee—which Ray wanted to mainline by now—and to try to feed him breakfast, which didn't work any better than usual. Ray's female body didn't want to look at food in the morning any more than his male one did.

So he sat on a stool at the kitchen island, which was nice, kind of like the one in his own apartment except brighter, prettier, and much neater; plus, the kitchen stools were wooden and actually had backs. The cookware hanging on the pot rack was heavy-gauge, quality stuff, not like Ray's K-Mart specials. The curtains at the windows did not look like they came from the Goodwill thrift store, and the windows behind the curtains were actually clean.

Ray didn't figure the female version of him for an actual neatnik or anything, but the extra X chromosome had to count for something, and he didn't know many women who'd tolerate grimy windows for very long. Although maybe that was just his mom and Stella. Rae was a version of Ray, so maybe she didn't care, and the clean windows were Fraser's doing.

Fraser cleared his throat. "Ray? Do you mind...wolves?"

Ray grinned. "You mean Dief? He's here?"

"Ah, good. Then you know him."

"Sure. Dief and me, we're homeboys."

Fraser gave him a queer look, like he didn't get the lingo.

"Buddies," Ray said. He wasn't going to go through that whole street thing again with this Fraser. It had been a big enough pain in the ass the first time. Rae wanted him to learn, she could teach him.

"Oh. I'm glad. Rae and Dief like each other very much."

Fraser went to the sliding door off the living room and opened it, and Dief bounded in, heading straight for Ray and licking his bare feet till Ray laughed and pushed him away gently.

Fraser put some dog food in a bowl near the fridge and Dief chowed down immediately, exactly like the Dief Ray knew. So the wolf was cool.

Then Fraser went back to the stove, where he'd been fixing his own breakfast. Ray swung one foot absently and looked around the room until Fraser stopped clattering pans and dishes and brought his oatmeal over to the bar. He sat down next to Ray.

"It's seven o'clock," Fraser said.

"Wow. You really got me up at the crack of dawn." Ray was impressed. But then, Fraser'd woken him up with sex, really good sex, and Ray figured if he ever chose sleep over really good sex, he'd know it was time to pack it in right there and call it a life.

"Yes, well..." Fraser looked away and started spooning oatmeal into his mouth like it was an unpleasant chore. Which it would've been to Ray, but Fraser really liked oatmeal, and like most early risers Fraser was always starving in the morning, so this was all kinds of wrong.

The whole situation was all kinds of wrong, so maybe Ray could understand. He had to look at it from Fraser's perspective. Here it was, what should have been an ordinary Thursday morning, and Fraser was sitting down to breakfast with his wife...only she wasn't really his wife. She was really a man who'd switched bodies with his wife. Fraser's wife was missing in another universe, and they were fresh out of transporters and starships and Vulcan geniuses who might've been able to fix things.

On the other hand, this was _Fraser_, who was probably the closest thing to a Vulcan genius on this planet, so maybe things were not as bad as they initially seemed.

"I'm sorry," Ray said. "Before. I, uh, I didn't stop to think about how this is pretty bad for you, too, not just me."

Fraser just nodded glumly.

"Yeah. Look, I can be kind of an asshole sometimes, but that don't mean I don't care about you." He shrugged. "You're the same _you_ here as you are there. I mean, you seem just the same. You would be the same if you weren't, you know, married to the girl version of me."

Fraser didn't answer, but he did put his spoon down in the oatmeal and push the bowl a little bit away from him.

"You hearing me?" Ray asked. "What I'm saying is that Rachael's got _you_ there, where she is. She's not alone." He put his hand out and touched Fraser's arm. "You're not alone either, buddy."

Fraser sighed, and finally looked up. "Thank you." He cleared his throat. "I imagine it'll take you a little longer to get showered and dressed than...er, than usual. You'd better get started if you're going to get to work on time."

"Fraser, I'm gonna be late for work today. Considering I'm in a different fucking universe and I have no idea how to get back to mine. Kind of a problem commute." He sipped his coffee—hey, good coffee, fresh brewed. Wow—living with Fraser had its perks. Perks? Sheesh. He whacked himself in the forehead with the flat of his hand a couple of times.

"What explanation are you going to give Lieutenant Welsh for Rae's absence?" Fraser asked. "Or is that up to me? Do you really think we should tell others about this?"

"You got a point. They'd have us committed." He drained his mug. "You got any more of this?"

Fraser got up and retrieved the coffee carafe and refilled Ray's mug. He must've palmed a sugar cube, too, because he opened his hand, and there one sat, all white and perfect on the flat of his palm. It reminded Ray of the way he used to feed a sugar cube to the police horse on the streetcorner when he was a kid. You made your hand perfectly flat like that so the horse wouldn't accidentally bite you.

Maybe Fraser didn't know for sure Ray wasn't going to bite him. Ray took the sugar cube. "Thanks, Frase. Takes her coffee the same way I do, huh?"

"Well, she likes sugar or she likes small candies in her coffee, but we've been out of those for a couple of days."

"Canadian Smarties?" Ray smiled. "Yeah, I like those, too. That was one of the first things you ever gave me, the day after I met you. Uh, I mean him. The other Fraser."

"Yes. I gave a package of them to Rae shortly after I met her. I don't know exactly why she put them in her coffee, as that would seem a rather odd way to consume them."

"'Cause it's good that way." Ray grinned. His Fraser didn't understand it, either, but he kept Ray supplied with the damn things, and that was better than understanding. That was buddies.

"You're very alike." Fraser sat down next to him again, facing him. "I don't think anyone in the Detective Division will notice the change—as long as you don't forget to use the ladies' room instead of the men's. Although...I don't know what they would make of that, but I don't imagine this exact situation would be their first guess."

Ray winced. There were a lot of things he hadn't thought about yet, and that was one of them. "So you figure she's probably going in to my job, so I'd better go in and do hers? Yeah, I get that. The bad guys never seem to take a holiday."

"It would seem only fair."

"Well, we don't know _what_ she's doing. But I got no choice, I got to trust her with my life. She can trust me with hers."

"I'm glad," Fraser said, and for the first time since he'd realized Ray wasn't his Rae, Fraser's eyes glowed again. "You can trust her as well," he said, sounding rock certain.

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. She's a person of integrity." Ray felt warm all over, even though Fraser wasn't talking about him. He'd probably have said something more, except the phone rang right then.

Fraser got up to answer it, listened for a sec, said, "Yes, sir. She's right here," and held out the phone.

Damn. Ray closed his eyes and gave his head a sharp shake. He was going to have to get used to being called "she." Thinking of himself as "he" was one of those things that was so ingrained that he didn't know how he could avoid slipping up. This was going to be one hell of an undercover job.

Too bad he wouldn't ever be able to tell anyone about it later. Except maybe his own Fraser. Parts of it, anyway.

Because how the hell was he going to tell his Fraser about the part where he woke up in bed with Rae's Fraser, who was doing things to him, and Ray was loving it, and wishing...yeah. He probably better forget the idea of telling Fraser any of that.

He opened his eyes and took the phone Fraser was handing him. "Uh. This is Vecch—uh, this is Ray," he said. Duh—of course he wouldn't be masquerading as Vecchio here.

Welsh's aggravated New York accent was as grating as ever. "Kowalski. I need you to get up to Dino's club. They found another body. Looks like another, ah...hooker."

"Hooker?" Ray racked his brain.

"Well...we're not sure, but one of Dino's...girls, anyway. One of the...girls."

 "Girls," Ray repeated, kind of stupidly. "Dino's?"

"Yeah, Dino's, the case you've been working on."

"Oh. That case, huh?" Ray said. Jeez, it was a damn good thing Welsh was his lieutenant and not some scumbag holding a gun on him, because cops who got stupid had a bad habit of calling in dead. Ray racked his brain trying to think of where he might've heard the name Dino before. It sounded like a goombah name. Maybe it was something from one of Vecchio's files?

Oh, wait. He—um, _she, Rae_—probably hadn't read Vecchio's files. Right. Ray cupped his hand over the phone and mouthed "need coffee" at Fraser.

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Welsh said, and yeah, there was his exasperated voice, right on cue. "You're not even awake, are you? Put Fraser back on."

Ray handed the phone over and concentrated on inhaling some more of his coffee.

"I'm sorry, sir," Fraser said into the phone. "You know how Rae is before she's had a sufficient quantity of coffee. Yes. Yes, sir. We'll investigate. Yes, I believe I can be free to liaise this morning. Very well. Yes, sir." He hung up.

"Dino's?" Ray asked.

"I take it you are not, in your universe, currently working on a case involving two—now three—sex workers on North Halsted who were all found dead within the same two-week period?"

Ray shook his head.

"I see. Well, Dino is a sort of impresario in what's known as drag theatre, which is..."

"I know what it is, Fraser." Ray made get-on-with-it circles in the air with his index finger.

"Right. Well, the victims all had worked for him at one time or another, though two of them were apparently not in his employ at the times of their deaths. He seems to be the link."

"So you think he did it?"

"I don't have sufficient information to develop a theory yet. There isn't any physical evidence connecting him with the murders. If they are murders."

"We don't even know that?"

"The first two deaths were caused by overdoses of street drugs. Dr. Gustafson is still looking for evidence that the drugs were not self-administered, but he hasn't found anything yet. However, it is certainly beyond statistical probability that both of them—or all three—would have chosen to commit suicide—or overdosed accidentally—within a fortnight."

"Laced with something?" Ray ventured.

"No significant impurities were identified."

"Suspicious, all right. They're murders."

"I agree; nevertheless, we'll have to prove that."

"And Dino's connection?"

"I've been busy at the Consulate, and I only know what you've told me about the case—I mean, what Rae has told me about the case. It certainly looks as though someone is trying to frame Dino."

"Yeah, why would he want to take out his own employees? It doesn't make sense."

"Not on the face of it, but two of the performers had already left his employ. According to Rae's notes, Dino claimed he'd found out the young women were engaging in prostitution, and he fired them."

"You only know what she told you about the case, but you memorized her notes?" Ray said, surprised.

"Well, I wouldn't say 'memorized,' but I did skim them quickly yesterday after dinner."

Fraser "skimming something quickly" meant he could ace an essay test on it—yeah, that was situation normal for Fraser, all right.

"Does Rae like him for this?"

"She told me her 'gut' informs her he's guilty."

"She goes on her gut," Ray said, smiling. "She would, yeah."

"Yes," Fraser said. He still looked kind of overcast, like a sky that was thinking about raining when nobody was looking. Ray thought about how he'd lost it in the car in Beth Botrelle's driveway, and how Fraser'd held him, and he nearly got choked up all over again.

"I may not be her," he said quietly. "But I'm the closest thing right now, and her arms are here. You need a hug, Fraser, you know where to come." He put his hand up and scratched his neck, thoughtfully. "Hell, we could even hug out on the sidewalk and nobody would think anything of it. Imagine that."

"I appreciate the offer, Ray, but I think it's probably better if we don't." Fraser looked so _lost_ that it tore at Ray's heart.

"I'm just talking about a _hug_, Fraser. You're my best friend. You're part of him, anyway. Maybe part of his soul, or whatever they call that. I don't know the airy-fairy spiritual name for it, but I'm pretty clear right now that it's real. You're him, in every way that counts in this universe, and I'm the only version of her that's here. And outside of everything else, we're best friends. I think a hug is okay."

Fraser closed his eyes like he was in pain. "It isn't. It can't be. It could lead to...things I shouldn't even be thinking right now."

Jeez. Fraser was _thinking _about it? "You can't even accept a little innocent hug after what we already did?"

"Especially because of what we already did. I'm not sure a hug could ever feel innocent, with you."

"You hugged me _naked_ not half an hour ago."

"I still thought you were my wife half an hour ago." Uh-huh, there was Fraser's pissy voice, right on schedule.

Ray'd better cool it. "You didn't suspect anything was queer?" he said, softer.

"Well, I knew something was wrong, but I didn't imagine complete life-entity transposition was the problem."

"Complete life whatsits?"

"It's not important right now," Fraser said. "What is important is that we have to solve this case before more people are killed, and we have to find the cause of the switch between you and Rae, and...we have to reverse it, as soon as possible."

"Amen to that." Ray dared to slide his hand over on top of Fraser's, and he was encouraged when Fraser didn't snatch his hand away. "Look," Ray said. "She's your partner, right? Your cop partner? And your friend? She was that first, right?"

"Yes," Fraser said, sounding uncertain.

"Well that's what she's got to be now. Even though I'm her."

Fraser drew a deep breath and nodded, but he didn't look all that convinced.

"Listen to me. I can do this," Ray said. "I've done undercover; I'm good at it. Hell, I'm doing it now in my own life."

"You are?" Fraser said, sounding suddenly alarmed.

"Don't worry, it's not what you're thinking. I'm not undercover as some creep. I'm sort of a placeholder for Ray Vecchio while he's gone. He's undercover with the Feds, out of town, but everybody's supposed to think he's still here. My badge, my file, my ID—all say Vecchio. I'm him for the time being."

"That's preposterous. You don't...er, she wouldn't...er, that is. I don't imagine even the male version of you could look anything like him."

"Yeah, you're right, and that's what I told them when they pegged me for the gig, but oddly enough it's been working. All the people who need to know who I am, they know. To everybody else, I'm Vecchio. Nobody who'd get curious is questioning where Vecchio is, and the Mountie still 'works with Vecchio from the 27th.' It's how we met, you and me."

Fraser was taking it all in; his eyes were big, disbelieving.

"Tell you about all that later," Ray said. "Just trust me. She'll be surprised, but she'll be fine. Nobody's gunning for me or nothing. There was just the one, Greta Garbo. You saved my life, Garbo's serving time on Cellblock Wacko, end of story."

"Rae saved _my_ life," Fraser said. "She jumped between me and a bullet from Greta Garbo's gun."

"Wearing a vest," Ray said, nodding. "Yeah, I did that, too. And then you disarmed Garbo and hog-tied her, and you came and got me up, and it hurt like a motherfucker, but I was fine. Just a big bruise like a mule kicked me in the chest."

Fraser was wincing. "Rae doesn't have the most genteel vocabulary, Ray, but she doesn't use that word."

"Huh? Which one?"

"Er..." Fraser gestured. The one that begins with "mother...I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to say that."

Ray grinned sheepishly. "Sorry. It is pretty rough. Of course, it was _my_ chest."

"I realize that. I'm grateful for your bravery. And Rae's."

Ray shrugged. "Had the vest on."

"It all took place in a split second. You had no way of knowing where she'd aim or that she wouldn't get in a second shot."

"Well, nothing risked, nothing gained," Ray said, cracking a little smile.

"Well said." The corners of Fraser's mouth twitched upward a tiny bit. "You and Rae do seem to be connected in some spiritual way."

"Of course we are. She's the version of me that's a woman. I'm the version of her that's a guy. We're like—we're the same soul, Fraser. And you and my Fraser—same soul." He patted Fraser's hand and looked him in the eye. "In both universes, Ray Kowalski loves you."

Fraser snaked his tongue out to wet his lower lip, and a shiver of response zinged through Ray's body. Memories of what that tongue could do flooded him. Bad time for that, he told himself.

He tried to push his reaction out of his mind. He knew how unwelcome it was to Fraser, who wanted only his wife, not a guy, not even the guy version of her, and wanted her back where she belonged. Ray had to do something about that, and he had a lot of thinking to do besides, but the first thing he had to do was get on that case Welsh had called about, and for that he needed Fraser.

He needed Fraser on board with him, every step of the way.

"So are we good?" he asked him. "Partners? Maybe even friends? Can we get the job done together?"

Fraser took a deep, shaky breath. "I sincerely hope so."

Ray took his hand off Fraser's and offered it, instead, to shake. Which was all kinds of backwards and weird considering what the two of them had woken up like this morning, but it had to be done, man to man.

Fraser nodded and took his hand in a firm, strong grip. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ray Kowalski," he said.

Ray grinned. "Likewise." He squeezed Fraser's hand one more time and let go. "Finish your oatmeal, buddy. I think I can manage a shower on my own, but how about you find me some clothes for when I get out? We've got to get uptown, and if this Chicago is anything like my Chicago, the traffic's going to be a bitch."

 


	3. Dino's Girls

They were in the GTO—she had a black GTO just like his—and heading uptown inside of twenty minutes.

Ray had been right about the shower; he managed it fine once he told himself to pretend like he was showering drunk or hung over. Just wash. Don't feel, don't think. And for Chrissakes, don't look.

Putting on Rae's clothes and gear was tougher, and that was what took most of the twenty minutes. Five minutes to shower and finger-comb some gel through his hair, five minutes to pull on Rae's jeans and t-shirt and socks and headkicking boots, five minutes to find Rae's badge and gun and the files she'd left on the coffee table, and five minutes to argue with Fraser about putting on Rae's bra.

"Ray, think for a minute. You're Rae here. R-A-E Rae." Fraser's eyes pleaded for understanding, and when had Ray ever been able to resist those big blue eyes when they got that pleading look in them? "She prefers to wear a bra. You can't just change her style of dress in a, er..." He rubbed at his eyebrow. "In a noticeable way, and expect it not to raise eyebrows."

Okay, so Fraser had a point. In fact, considering the grief Ray regularly gave Frannie about her usual style of dress, it was kind of hypocritical of him to suddenly find reasons to skip the bra.

"It would be best not to call any unnecessary attention to your...differences, don't you think? You'll have a difficult enough time pretending to be my...partner."

Ray could hear the word _wife_ loud and clear even though Fraser didn't say it. He closed his eyes and sighed. Except for the getting-to-have-sex-with-Fraser part, it sucked being a girl; it really did. He figured he wasn't going to get taken seriously today, period, and he could put on all the attitude he wanted; it wasn't like he had the balls or the fists any more to back it up. He imagined what the other cops would say. They'd call him a bitch—or worse—behind his back and speculate about how long it had been since he'd gotten laid.

But there was still no way in hell Ray was putting that goddamned thing on his chest, even if it was a girl's chest at the moment. He had her underwear on, sure, but her underwear was boy shorts, clingy, soft, and low-cut, and a lot like his boxer briefs except for the lack of a Y-front—which he was not going there, he was Not Thinking About That—so he was okay with those, for now.

But the bra was a medieval torture device, and besides, it was a _bra._ It was bad enough having to be in a girl's body. But breasts or no breasts, Ray would've felt like a jerk in that thing and he Just. Couldn't. Do It.

He'd ended up finding a sort-of-tight tank shirt in her dresser and pulling that on over the t-shirt, and Fraser'd backed down, and that was that. For now.

So there he was barreling up I-290 with Fraser in Rae's GTO, with the windows open and the wind ruffling his hair. He had sunglasses on because the sun was already beating down outside, making Chicago all shiny, and the great thing about the sunglasses was that when he glanced in one of the mirrors and accidentally caught sight of himself, he didn't crash the car, because he didn't look all that different. Plus, Fraser just sat in the passenger seat and read the Dino file aloud to Ray, and Dief mostly behaved himself in the back seat. Which that might've had something to do with Ray promising him pizza later, but, hey, whatever worked.

  
All in all, Ray was almost, _almost_ feeling like himself again by the time they pulled up in front of the crime scene, stuck the police placard and the flasher in the windshield to keep the GTO from getting towed, and got out.

But then he approached the front of the bar, with its big unlit neon sign: _Dino's Girls_. Two of the uniforms there turned around and gave him the once-over from head to toe and back up, and that was the end of feeling like himself. He clenched his fists and his jaw...

...and walked right up to them, flashing his detective's shield.

The one on the left was obviously a rookie, all curly blond confusion and pink cheeks, and he must have seen something in Ray's face that did not look like a glowing memo to his lieu, because he tipped his hat and stammered something about having to see whether the ME was still on the premises, then turned tail and ran.

The other uniform, older than Ray and clearly having grown an attitude along with his non-regulation gut, smirked in Ray's direction like he had Ray figured out and wasn't disturbed by the fact that Ray outranked him. He gave Ray the once-over again, his eyes lingering on Ray's breasts.

Thing of it was, Ray knew this guy, and he was a bad enough jerk to male cops. Ray was apparently having anti-luck this morning.

Well, that was assuming he even registered on the luck scale any more, considering waking up in the wrong body, and all.

Oh, well. Best defense was a good offense. So he walked right up to the uniform and said, "This morning."

"What?" The uniform's head came up.

"Since you were wondering. Last time I got laid was this morning. How about you, asshole? You get lucky in the last decade or did the chicks figure out how bad your attitude sucks?"

"I heard about you, Kowalski," the guy said. "Heard you pulled this assignment at the freak show 'cause it takes one to know one."

"Save it. You're lucky you're not wearing my bootprint on your face."

"Oh, yes, _ma'am._" The guy gave a little wag of his head that spelled trouble.

Ray whipped back to face him, his fists clenched, ready. He got in the guy's face. "Don't call me 'ma'am.'"

And Fraser was there, Fraser was behind him, just about close enough to hear the conversation. Ray willed him to stay out of it and hoped this Fraser was on his wavelength like his own Fraser was. Well, most of the time.

The uniform actually took a big step back, like Ray's girly fists were an actual threat. Which maybe they were. Maybe a woman could haul off and hit a uniform and it'd never get reported. Yeah, Ray could see that. What male uniform would want to admit a chick bruised him? He'd never hear the end of it.

"Detective." The guy still sounded obnoxious.

Ray eased up. "Okay, then, _Patrolman_. You don't gotta like me. You just do your job, I do my job, the job gets done. Deal?"

"Yes, Detective."

Ray turned toward the entrance to Dino's.

"You a bull dyke, Kowalski?" he heard behind his back.

He whipped back around.

"Ray," Fraser said.

"You want to repeat that?" Ray said out of a jaw set so hard it ached.

"Just saying. You got dyke hair, Detective. Something we should know?"

"Uh-huh," Ray said in an even, dangerous voice. "My Doc Martens are size nine. Your proctologist will need to know."

Ray," Fraser said.

"Who the hell asked you?" the uniform said, whirling on Fraser.

"In the interest of civil discourse, perhaps you should apologize to Detective Kowalski," Fraser said calmly.

"Fuck that. I don't care how shiny her gold shield is, she don't get to come up here from Major Crimes and act like we ain't doing our jobs. She probably slept her way up to detective anyway. Who you fucking, Kowalski? Your lieu? His boss?"

"Take it back," Ray said, almost quietly.

"She was assigned here, as you were, Officer O'Malley. The case has been turned over to Major Crimes. I see no point in attempting to cast aspersions on a fellow officer's character for reasons of misplaced professional jealousy."

The guy had to parse that one out. Ray could practically see the wheels turning. Slowly.

"What are you, Miss Manners?" the guy finally said.

"He's Canadian," Ray said.

"So how you know she's not doing her boss?" the guy asked Fraser.

"I really do urge you to hold your tongue," Fraser said, and finally, _finally_ Ray saw anger tightening those handsome features. "I can't allow her to draw a reprimand for striking you. But I'm not under the same constraint."

"You threatening me? Who the hell are you?"

"Benton Fraser, RCMP. Detective Kowalski's unofficial partner. And her husband."

The guy gasped like a fish in air and said nothing.

Ray and Fraser turned their backs on him and went into Dino's. They met the rookie coming out of the building.

"You might want to go see if your partner needs some sort of rescue technique," Fraser told him. "He seemed to be in some difficulty. You know, in the Far North castor oil is reputed to be a good solution for digestive ailments..."

The rookie shuddered and took off like something bit him in the ass. Dief gave an amused snort. Ray patted the wolf's head and led Fraser into the building to get started on some actual work.

Fraser stopped him though, just inside the door to the club, in the dark vestibule.

"Ray, ah...about Officer O'Malley. Did you know him in your...?"

"My Chicago? Yeah, I've met the asshole before. I didn't imagine he could be even more of a dick than he is in my universe, but then, I never saw him from a woman's point of view before. What a creep. Disgrace to the uniform."

"I quite agree; however, Ray..."

Uh-oh. Fraser's lecturing voice. "What?"

"Was it really necessary to confront him the moment you walked onto the crime scene?"

Fraser had a point. Ray had kind of picked that fight.

"He was giving me the once-over, Fraser. I did not deserve the once-over from a fellow officer."

Fraser did not, to his credit, say anything about the bra that Ray had refused to wear. "No, you didn't, but you say you've met him. So you were already expecting bad behavior. I assume that's why you went on the offensive so quickly."

"Yeah, well. Perspective's a bitch. I got some perspective now."

"You might have experienced the, er, 'once-over' even in your male body. Especially in this neighborhood."

"Boystown, you mean? You got a point, but I shouldn't have to put up with it from a fellow cop."

"That's quite true." But Fraser still didn't look happy with Ray's answers.

"Rae would've handled it differently, huh?"

"I think she would just have rolled her eyes and ignored him," Fraser said. "People who act inappropriately are often simply seeking attention. Even negative attention will do, if they can't get the positive kind."

"Oh. Like a little kid, huh?"

"Exactly."

"I'm sending a memo to his lieu," Ray said. "Don't try to talk me out of it. Thirty-year veteran on the force should not do that, Fraser. Unprofessional jackass."

"I think it's an excellent idea, Ray."

Ray shook out his shoulders. "Okay, so, are we good?"

"Certainly," Fraser said. "We are good, you and I. But...well, I hope you won't go out of your way to, er, provoke people if it's not necessary." Fraser scratched at his eyebrow kind of uncertainly, and he didn't meet Ray's eyes, and Ray looked at him for a moment, and then he twigged.

Fraser didn't want hm rocking the boat, provoking people who might later complain about it when Rae was back where she belonged. Most of all, Fraser didn't want Ray getting himself—and Rae's body—hurt, especially over completely preventable stuff.

And Ray suddenly realized this undercover gig was going to be even tougher than he'd thought. The worst thing was, he couldn't resign. There was no fucking _out _for him.

It was like some weird dream that he didn't get to wake up from.

Back in his own Chicago, he'd dreamed more than once about being a girl. Long ago, yeah, but he'd sure as hell never heard another person admit to a dream like that. Which probably most guys_ wouldn't_ admit it, but Ray'd never even heard of such a thing happening, not even on late-night talk shows.

But Ray had had a few of those dreams when he was a teenager. At the time, he'd figured it'd had something to do with Mickey Zawadzki beating him up in the schoolyard and calling him a sissy, and Ray being afraid he maybe _was_ a sissy, because the only other people in school who felt the same way he did about Steve McQueen seemed to be the girls.

That might just mean the girls in school were smarter than Mickey Zawadzki and more mature—which was true—and also that Ray was smarter and more mature than him—which was also true—but it also might mean other stuff about Ray that could get him beat up a lot, and by bigger guys than Mickey, even.

So Ray learned early not to mention McQueen to the other boys any more. He made himself stop imagining being _with_ Steve McQueen, his buddy-sidekick-partner, and started imagining _being_ McQueen, especially his characters, like Bullitt—tough like him, brave like him, _macho_ like him. A cop like him.

And since that attitude worked for Ray—worked really well, won him Stella and stopped the bullies from whaling on him, and stopped people from calling him shit that no guy should call another guy—Ray kept on doing it. That was about when he decided the skinny-Polack-with-glasses look was not _him. _Leaving his glasses home a lot meant getting bad grades more often than not, but Ray just took extra shop and held down a part-time job or two, which gave him a few bucks to take Stella out on the town. The point was, it worked: nobody called him sissy any more.

He flunked high school, so he studied at night and got a GED, and then he got his 60 college credits so he could get into the police academy. After that, he had a badge and a gun. He needed his glasses to keep his marksman rating, but it didn't matter. He wore the ugliest glasses he could find, real geek glasses, and he wore his bristly attitude, and nobody gave him any crap or they ended up with his bootprints embedded in their ass.

And now, overnight, all of that training was useless. In Rae's form, none of that stuff would look right, and most of it wouldn't work. He couldn't kick any guy's ass any more, even if he still knew how to give the attitude. So how was he supposed to be?

Ray knew how to be _Ray._ He didn't know how to be anyone else. When he had to go undercover, he faked it, of course, but he played it as himself as much as possible. It was the safest way to go, and also the only way he could stand doing it.

Ray touched Fraser's arm. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I'm...kind of new to this. I don't know how to be a woman, Fraser. I sure as hell don't know how to be _me_ and also be a woman."

Fraser looked straight at him then, finally, and the look in his eyes was so uncertain that it verged on...no, it was:_ scared._

Ray felt a freakout trying to come on. He clenched his hands at his sides and dug his nails into his palms to hold it back, but his fists started to shake anyway.

And then Fraser's hand was around one of Ray's clenched fists, just holding it. Just offering his touch, but not trying to force Ray to open his hand, or anything. Just holding.

After a minute, Ray's hands stopped shaking, and Fraser's eyes were steadier, looking into his. "I'm here with you," Fraser said. "We'll get through it together, as we have everything else."

Ray found he could breathe again. Because he _knew_ Fraser. Knew Fraser meant it. And even if this was a different Fraser, he was still_ Fraser,_ and he was right. They'd come through a lot together already, and what hadn't torn them down had made them stronger. Different universe or elaborate hallucination, Ray _knew _Fraser. His partner and friend.

"Okay, okay." He got hold of Fraser's other hand. And Fraser leaned forward, like he was maybe going to _kiss_ Ray, which, wow, that would have been a jolt, standing just outside a crime scene. But then Fraser pulled back, and let go Ray's hand and Ray let go, too, and then they were stuck looking at each other like neither one of them had any idea what to do.

Fraser recovered first, and nodded toward the interior doors. "Perhaps we should..."

Ray had work to do. It would help. "Yeah. Thanks, Frase."

"Don't mention it," Fraser said, sounding a little formal for a guy who'd almost just kissed Ray. But they were professionals, and kissing outside a crime scene was not okay, no matter how married Fraser and Rae were.

"Right," Ray said, squaring his shoulders as much as possible. Okay, so let's go in."

Fraser held the door for him, but since Fraser always did that, Ray didn't give him any grief over it.

They checked out the place where the dead hooker was found, but there was nothing much to see. The little apartment upstairs in the club had three crappy little bedrooms, paper thin walls, and ugly orange carpeting. The dead girl's room was just a room: bed, dresser, chair, nothing much. A faded poster of the Supremes starting to peel off the wall. There were a few clothes in the closet. The top drawer in the dresser was empty. Fraser hmmed at it and tasted some dust in the corner, but didn't come out with anything in actual English, so Ray didn't bug him about it.

The ME came up to give Ray the rundown: the victim had been found in her bed, officers responding didn't think anything much had been disturbed, they secured the premises on arriving. The other residents hadn't heard anything queer overnight or in the morning, nothing until somebody banged on the girl's door to find out if she wanted coffee. The roommates saw her and freaked and called 911, and that was pretty much how the morning had gone. The ME on the scene had already bagged and tagged her, and he promised to get her down to Mort right away, so Ray got out of having to see the body right then, which was a bonus.

When they finally found someone who was both willing and not too hysterical to answer their questions, it turned out to be one of the performers, a woman—well, a person—named Maddy. She had long legs and shiny dark hair that was angle cut at the chin line, and she wore dark eyeliner that didn't do much to hide the red, puffy look around her eyes.

But she sure kept her cool, even if it did look like she'd been up all night crying. She gave Ray a long, appraising look that was totally different from the cops' leers; more like something Stella used to call a "thousand-mile stare." Maddy seemed to look right into Ray, like she could even maybe see the man he was, hidden in Rae's form.

Maddy pulled them into the main room of the nightclub and sat down with them at one of the tables near the wall, slinking into a chair, all six feet of her, and crossing her long, long legs daintily.

The room was otherwise empty except for somebody banging pots and pans, and occasionally swearing, back in the kitchen. The wall behind the tables was all mirrors.

Ray kept his eyes focused on Maddy so he wouldn't have to look at the mirrors, and he stammered, "So you knew all three of them?"

"Yeah. They all worked here at one time or another. Viv and Darlene left six months ago. Dino'd been trying to get them back, but..." She shrugged. "He said they'd gotten too deep into drugs or something." Her voice was soft, like a real woman's, not the whiskey tenor of a typical drag queen.

"Do you know anyone who might have wished the victims any harm?" Fraser asked.

She rolled her eyes like he was being naïve. "Nobody in particular. I mean, there's always someone around who objects to, you know..."

"Sex workers?" Ray guessed. He'd had a little on-the-job sensitivity training from a Canadian, after all.

"I was going to say 'freaks,'" Maddy said. "This community's been pretty accepting since Dino opened this place and hired us, but it only takes one crusader, right? There's always someone in any community who just can't accept...our kind."

"Your kind?" Like she and the other hookers were some kind of aliens from another planet or something, just because they were guys who liked to dress up as women? "You saying it's just a whackjob who don't like hookers?"

She frowned at him. "This is a classy nightclub, Detective. Why would you assume—"

"I'm not from Vice," Ray said. "And to answer your question, it was Dino told us the first two victims were hookers, and we confirmed it through other sources. I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume they didn't suddenly take up that career after they left here."

Maddy gave a cautious little shrug, which told Ray a lot.

"Look," he said. "I don't really care if somebody's turning tricks here, because I got a murderer to catch. On the other hand, I'm thinking that the prostitution side of the business might not be the safest thing to engage in these days, and I am not referring to any police action."

"Because the murderer might be a client."

"Exactly."

She sighed. "You know, I don't think so. All our clients know about us, accept...what we are. It's got to be someone who has a problem with it."

"I don't get it," Ray said. "I do not get this thing you keep saying, like you're some kinda alien creature from outer space. What's that about? 'Cause this is Chicago, and there's been hookers in Chicago, both men and women, ever since there _was_ a Chicago. What's the big deal?"

"Dino didn't tell you, huh?"

"Apparently not." Ray glanced at Fraser, who shook his head.

"See, I'm not really a woman," Maddy said. She coiled a lock of her dark hair, which Ray would swear was not a wig, around one long finger.

Fraser cleared his throat. "Yes, well, we do realize that. This establishment is, after all, known for entertainment of a certain..."

She stopped him by patting him on the arm with a well-manicured hand. "No, you don't get it. I'm not really a man, either."

"How's that?" Ray said.

"Well, you know, on the outside I suppose I look mostly like a woman." Which she did look like a real girl, better than any drag queen Ray'd ever seen.

"But on the inside I'm a guy. Only no one can tell."

Ray wanted to put his head in his hands and groan: he could relate. Instead, he said, "The dress don't exactly help. Why do, uh, you know, why do drag theater if you don't want to look like a girl?"

She shrugged her elegant shoulders. "Only thing I could make a decent living at," she said. "Anyway, I can't exactly put on trousers and pretend to be a guy, either."

"Why not?" Ray said. "You're like, um, Jaye Davidson in _The Crying Game._ You got one of those faces can look either way." He shrugged. "Jaye's hot. Nothing wrong with a pretty guy." He hid a grin and didn't look at Fraser.

Maddy winked at Fraser, but answered Ray: "Don't I know it, honey." Then she sighed. "But no, I'm not like Jaye. He's a normal male; that was the big revelation, right? I'm more like Julie Andrews in _Victor, Victoria_."

"Wait—you mean you're really a woman pretending to be a drag queen?"

"I guess this sounds pretty confusing," she said.

"Just a bit," Fraser said soothingly. "Perhaps if you began at the beginning. Do you wish to tell us if...whether you're biologically a man or a woman?"

She blew out a breath. "That's the $64,000 question, honey. I don't know how to answer that."

"Jeez," Ray said. "How tough can it be? You got a dick or not?"

_"Ray,"_ Fraser said in kind of a choked-up voice.

Oh. Yeah. After this morning, Ray ought to know better, even though he hadn't had whatever sensitivity training Mounties got put through.

"Sorry," Ray told her, "I—I'm sorry. Fraser's right. That don't always answer the question, does it?"

"No," she said softly, maybe painfully. "Even if I could answer it."

"You don't _know?_"

She shrugged. "What's the difference between a very small dick and a very big clit?"

Whoa. That rocked Ray right back in his chair. He carefully kept from looking at Fraser, who he figured had probably gone as red as his uniform. "Uh, I don't know, but I assume there is a difference."

Maddy shook her head. "Well, you'd be surprised. And that's why sometimes doctors can't even tell without testing." She sighed. "Look, here's the thing. I grew up being told I was a girl, but not really believing it, even though I guess I mostly looked like a girl. But then I didn't hit puberty. You know, when the other girls did. Everyone said I was a late bloomer. Fact was I wasn't ever going to bloom. My parents finally took me to a doctor when I was sixteen, and that's when I found out."

Fraser was looking at her all sympathetically. "Please go on."

"Yeah, so the doctor comes in, and he says, 'What we've got here is a case of androgen insensitivity.' Sounded like a mechanic telling me about my car, right? Not like somebody who was finally explaining why I was..._wrong._"

"Ah," Fraser said, like that explained something.

"Andro-whatsis?" Ray said.

She chuckled hollowly. "That's what I said. The doctor said I was a genetic male, XY. That I was supposed to be a boy and something happened before I was born. Or something didn't happen."

"I understand," Fraser said.

"Well, I don't," Ray said.

"Well, Ray, all fetuses start out essentially as females, and normally the ones that are to become males go through a change when they're exposed to higher levels of testosterone early in gestation. But a small number of genetically male fetuses don't respond to the androgens, the male hormones, and so they don't develop as normal males. To some degree they remain female in appearance."

"Right," she said, sounding impressed. "How'd you know about that?"

"He knows about almost everything; he's Canadian," Ray said before Fraser could explain about the traveling biologist he met in Tuk-to-what-the-fuck. "So, wait, did you really say all babies start out as females?"

"Well, not really, of course," Fraser said. "The XY chromosomes are there from the beginning. But the male fetuses are outwardly indistinguishable from the female ones, at that early stage."

Maddy shrugged. "Kind of ironic, huh? Adam's rib—what a joke. It's really Eve's rib, isn't it?"

"Yes," Fraser said, real intently, like he'd thought about the subject before. That was wacky, but not really surprising, knowing Fraser.

"So I was never actually a female, but I also didn't develop into a normal male," Maddy said. "What does that make me?"

"I, uh...I don't know," Ray said, scratching at his neck. His stomach was tightening up, almost like he was going to be sick, because this wasn't just about Maddy any more.

"The, er, technical term is probably 'hermaphrodite,'" Fraser said quietly. "After the Greek deities Hermes and Aphrodite, thought to be ideal representations of the male and female principles..."

"Fraser. Can it before you give us the entire ancient history lecture." Ray turned back to Maddy. "So when you say _us—_you mean you've met others like you? Kind of neither-nor?"

"They call it 'intersex' these days," Maddy said. "And, yeah. We all are."

"All the drag performers at _Dino's Girls,_ you mean?" Fraser looked really intrigued. Surprised, even.

"Yeah."

"Including the three that..."

"Yeah," Maddy said. "They were the first three that Dino hired."

"Shit," Ray said. "Shit, shit, shit."

"You can say that again." Maddy frowned and clicked her nails on the table.

"Shit," Ray said again, just to oblige. "It's not just someone killing hookers, like we've heard before."

Maddy gave him an indignant look and flipped a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"Hey, don't get me wrong. I do not want people of any kind getting killed in Chicago. It's just there's some, you know, patterns to these things sometimes. Hookers getting killed, that has happened, we got an idea where to look, that's all."

She kind of huffed her breath, but she relaxed a little.

"But I been a cop eighteen years in this city and this is a new one on me: someone killing hermaphrodite drag queens." He stopped then, because he'd just heard himself. Then he groaned and dropped his head into his hands. What the fuck was it about the 2-7? And why was this Ray's life?

Even in another fucking dimension he couldn't get away from the weird. He lifted his head and the first thing he saw was his hands. Rae's slender hands.

Fuck. Who was he kidding? Right now, _Ray_ was the weird. Maddy was _normal_ compared to Ray, because she was in the body and the universe she'd been born into.

He groaned again and turned to Fraser. "I need coffee." He hoped he didn't sound too pathetic.

But he probably did, because Fraser's hand closed around his, right in front of Maddy. Which, wow, that was...oh, yeah. Fraser was his _husband. _Right. Not that Maddy would've blinked even if Ray was his usual guy self, right? What she saw on the average Thursday night had to be way past a guy holding another guy's hand.

"Thanks," Ray told him, real quietly. Then he looked back at Maddy. "You, um. You ought to take a few days off. You know. We ought to get you into, um..." Christ, he couldn't think with Fraser's hand holding his. It was so goddamned warm. Also, Ray's throat was suddenly weirdly dry.

"I believe Detective Kowalski means you would be safer in protective custody," Fraser said.

"Are you arresting me?" Maddy squeaked.

Ray found his voice. "No, no, nothing like that. Just...you might be kind of a target."

She waved a hand. "Oh. Thanks for the offer, but I really have to work. Dino would have to close down if we all did that."

"It wouldn't be a bad idea for him to close down now," Fraser said. "Just temporarily."

"No kidding," Ray said. "Look, a body was found on these premises this morning. You already can't go back in your apartment till the crime scene guys get done with it. We can close him down whether he wants us to or not."

"That's a little drastic, don't you think, Detective?"

"I do not. Three of your current or former coworkers phone in dead in two weeks, and it's _drastic_ to shut down the place of business for a few days? I don't think so."

"It'll be all right," Maddy said. "_You're _here now."

"What? What's that supposed to mean, I'm here? I just caught this case, um—when was that, again, Fraser?"

"I believe you first told me about it on Tuesday, Ray."

"Yeah. Two days ago," Ray said.

Maddy looked at him, real close, right in the eyes, like she was trying to see inside him, which that was a weird thought.

"I just know," she said.

"Look, Maddy. I'm sure the commissioner would be, uh, real happy to hear the citizens have that much confidence in the Chicago PD, but this is your life we're talking about. Fraser and me, we're on this, but at this stage we're feeling around in the dark." No fucking kidding.

"What Detective Kowalski is saying," Fraser said in that maddeningly calm way of his, "is that it would be prudent to remove you as a target until we track the killer down or at least get a better idea of his pattern, so that we can predict more accurately where he'll strike next."

Maddy fiddled with a long strand of her hair. "That'll just expose the next girl to the risk. At least I'm on the lookout for him already. And you know where I am; you can assign someone to watch me. Wouldn't that be better, if you could draw him out at a time and place of your choosing instead of his?"

"Well, of course it would be better, but you'd be taking a serious risk," Fraser said.

"You remove me as a target, he goes after another target you're possibly not aware of, and you get there too late," she said. "We're better off with me staying on the job."

She had a point.

"You got balls, lady," Ray said before he could stop himself. Jeez, Ray had a smaller foot and a smaller mouth today, but he apparently still could get the one in the other in a tenth of a second.

Maddy just laughed, though. "Yeah, so they tell me."

"Okay," Ray said after a minute. "Okay. We'll do it. We'll put an undercover cop in here around the clock."

"They'll stick out like a sore thumb," Maddy said. "Unless you got a closet drag queen in the police department who wants to join the staff."

Fraser sat up straight all of a sudden. "That's an excellent idea."

"Oh, no," Ray said. "You are not going to do this, Fraser." He glanced over at Maddy, who laughed.

"Why not?" Fraser looked like he was almost pouting, exactly like Ray's Fraser would have, and Ray almost melted just to see that look again. Freaky as it was, it was like something _normal_, something from Ray's real life, and it kind of made him homesick.

"I've actually gone undercover as a woman before," Fraser said. "And I can sing."

Ray fought down more laughter, not only because this was serious, but because it messed with his head to hear high-pitched laughter coming out of his own chest.

"Yeah, I was briefed," Ray managed to choke out. "With photographs."

"Oh," Fraser said. "So you didn't think I made a convincing woman?"

"Actually, you weren't bad," Ray said. "For a schoolteacher, which is what you were disguised as. Put a feather boa on Miss Fraser, change the dress and the wig, and you could probably pull off the drag queen thing. But, no."

"Well, why not?"

"Well," Ray said, trying not to sound too sarcastic, "aside from the fact that the clientèle here will not be impressed by your encylo-whatsis knowledge of Stan Rogers songs, you're forgetting something. And that is that the drag queens at _Dino's_ are not men. Uh, I mean..." He turned to Maddy. "Not exactly regular biological men."

Maddy nodded like it didn't bother her.

Ray turned back to Fraser. "So you would _still_ stand out like a sore...appendage, Fraser." He stood up, and leaned over the table, and caught sight of himself again in the mirrored wall opposite. Or, rather, caught sight of Rae, with her spiky hair, her tight shirts just barely hiding her lack of bra, and her attitude—well, _Ray's_ familiar attitude, which tightened her shoulders and carved two extra lines around her mouth.

He looked back at Maddy. "I know I probably look like a dyke on a bike," he said. "But would I do?"

Maddy tapped one long fingernail thoughtfully against her lips. "Well, you can look the part, sure. How are you on stage? Can you sing?"

"I can carry a tune. Never sang for an audience, though—not since the seventh grade, anyway."

And he had zero idea how to sing with a woman's voice. That'd be new. The only stuff he'd ever sung back when he was a soprano was the alphabet song and a Polish Christmas carol or two. With a lisp from losing his two front teeth. So maybe that wasn't the best idea. Besides, he only really knew the words to ABBA songs. He figured even in this universe ABBA had to be a long shot.

He thought for a second, then smacked his head. "Wait a second. I'll go you one better. I can dance."

"Ooh," Maddy said. "That's great. Dino will love that." She grinned at him, kind of slyly. "You know, Detective, you've got some serious balls, yourself."

Ray laughed. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know."

 

 


	4. A Certain Symmetry

  
"You think you could come in to the station with me, Fraser?" Ray said once they were back in the GTO, headed downtown.

Dino hadn't come in to the club yet, and Ray wasn't going to pull a Columbo and pester the guy. He probably knew he was a suspect, and if he was guilty, they were going to have to nail him on hard evidence, not a bunch of TV mumbo-jumbo. Ten to one the guy'd already lawyered up, but Ray figured leaving Maddy with a message for Dino about Ray doing the dress-up gig was good. Might even fool Dino into thinking they were looking at somebody else for the crimes.

"I think it might be wise, yes," Fraser said.

"Yeah. Help me navigate the choppy waters of, uh, my first day in there as Rae."

"Yes." Fraser said, so quickly that Ray realized Fraser hadn't even entertained the idea of doing anything else today. And, oh, man, the look on his face said he was going to stick to Ray like glue. Now that Ray thought about it, that made total sense. Because Ray was walking around in _Fraser's wife's body._ Fraser had to have realized already that Ray would do his best to take care of it, but it wasn't like working for the CPD was a _safe_ job, exactly.

Ray pulled a long, deep breath. "Okay. Okay, so we go in, we do our jobs. Or...you help me do my job, I guess."

"We do our jobs," Fraser corrected. "I am, after all, officially your unofficial liaison."

"Whatever that means."

"Yeah." Fraser looked away.

"This is weird."

"Mm." Fraser was still looking away from him.

"I got to admit I'm...I'm kind of at a loss, here, Frase." From the corner of his eye he saw Fraser finally look up.

"I...Ray, you don't have to pretend to be Rae with me. You couldn't, anyway."

Ray shook his head to clear it, keeping his eyes on the road. "I know that. What I meant was, I don't have the faintest idea what to do about this transfer thing. How do you follow an evidence trail from another fucking universe, Fraser? Am I just going to have to wait and hope that, you know, I go to sleep tonight and wake up as me tomorrow?

"And even if I do, am I gonna wake up every single morning of the rest of my life wondering which version of me I am today?" He rubbed a hand over his face, quickly. "Fuck, it's worse than undercover."

"You'll need to talk to someone," Fraser said.

"What, like therapy? They'd commit me."

"There will be someone who'll understand."

"You think they have a support group for people who've been body-switched into a different universe? I don't think so."

"I mean the other Benton Fraser. He'll listen."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I know what he's going through." Ray could feel Fraser's eyes on him, intense.

And that grabbed Ray by the throat. He had to swallow hard. His right hand was off the wheel and clasped around Fraser's arm before he could even think about doing it.

Fraser's hand came down over his automatically, warm and comfortable and _huge. _

Ray glanced over, then back to the road. Yeah, Fraser's hand would feel huge on Ray's delicate female hand. Right. Also, this wasn't weird for Fraser. Well, not physically, anyway. Hands on arms, hands on hands—it had to be pretty normal for them. Rae was Fraser's _wife_. They'd have done this stuff.

Heck, it wouldn't have been all that weird for Ray and his own Fraser. They weren't all that hung up on preserving personal space, he had to admit, and the two of them were alone in the car right now; nobody could see them. It could've happened.

Although, the way Fraser was squeezing Ray's hand right now, rubbing his thumb over the back of it, maybe that wouldn't have happened. If it did, Ray'd have gotten hard while driving. He was getting aroused now, warmth pooling in his belly, his breath sort of catching in his throat, his nipples tightening under his shirts.

"We, uh," Ray said, trying to catch his breath. He didn't want Fraser to move his hand. "We're talking like there's a good chance of me getting back where I belong. I gotta believe I will, or I don't know if I'm gonna make it. But I still don't have the first clue. How the hell do I find out what happened and how to fix it? It's not like there's a manual."

"Hm," Fraser said. He squeezed Ray's hand and let go, directing Ray's hand back to the wheel, which, no surprise there. Responsible driving, and all that. Damn.

"What's 'hm'?" Ray asked when he got his voice back.

"The idea of a manual for a...predicament like this."

"You think there's a manual?" Ray's voice squeaked even higher than it already was.

"Well, no, not as such. But..." his tongue flicked out to wet his lips. "There is a certain...symmetry to, er, your transposition and the case you're being asked to solve."

"What, the hooker murders?"

Fraser ran a finger under the edge of his collar, which apparently was too damn stiff in this universe, too.

"The fact that they're hermaphrodites, Ray. They look like women, but they're not, not exactly."

"Kind of like me at the moment. Yeah, I hear you."

"It's too much to be a coincidence. It's got to be connected."

Ray shrugged. "It's freaky, but freaky's kind of the rule around the station. Sometimes I think District 27 is just over the border of the Twilight Zone, what with the weird shit that goes on there. We just had a case with the, the voodoo zombies and curses and stuff. I try to put it out of my head."

"The Laferette case? Yes, we had that, too. It would be interesting to have you go back over some of Rae's recent cases to see if there are any differences."

"Well, this one's different," Ray said. "You say Welsh tossed Rae this case two days ago?"

"That's right."

"I did not have a case like this on Tuesday, or yesterday. Nothing even close. We haven't had any murders since last Saturday, and it was a body off the pier, a businessman, not a hooker."

"McTeague?"

"Yeah, you get that one?"

"Yes," Fraser said. "It was the business partner. He's already been arrested and charged."

"Right. I hauled him in Monday, questioned him for like an hour and he crumbled faster than a cookie in Dief's mouth."

Dief whined from the back.

"Cookies later, wolf," Ray said without thinking. "Work now." Dief gave a snuffly little snort, making Ray grin. "Lip reading in the rear-view mirror. At least Dief's the same."

Fraser smiled, too. "I'm glad. He's a wonderful companion." Then he sobered. "The fact makes me more confident of my theory. There are so many points of congruence between the two universes. Diefenbaker, me, Lieutenant Welsh, Ray Vecchio..."

"Yeah, even O'Malley."

"Louis Gardino and the approximate timing of his murder. Your car. The McTeague case, the Laferette case. Chicago itself appears virtually the same to you. Yet this case, which you don't recall from your universe, is strikingly thematically consistent with our problem."

_Our _problem. Not Ray's problem, but a shared problem, both his and Fraser's. Ray swallowed around the lump in his throat. He was so far from home, but so close to it at the same time—because of Fraser.

"All right, back to that congruence thing," he said. "The only people we came across so far that are different are Maddy and everybody at _Dino's Girls_. I don't even recognize the place. I think there's a bookstore there in my Chicago."

"It's a telling clue," Fraser said. "This case is the one point of divergence we are aware of so far, and the victims are a physical manifestation of the, er...the spiritual predicament you find yourself in." He sighed.

"Yeah, it's hinky, all right. I get you. So you think just solving the case is gonna do it? Send me back? Bring Rae back?"

Fraser was nodding. "Perhaps. Or perhaps an opportunity will arise for you to make some kind of choice."

"Huh?" Ray couldn't think of a better way to convey his total confusion.

"I keep returning to your comment about a manual. We're faced with a problem that lies outside the boundaries of what we think of as the, well, the laws of nature. Although cutting-edge theories in physics certainly posit the existence of parallel dimensions, it's not information police officers can use to solve crimes." He paused, then cocked his head. "Well, it hasn't been, thus far. At least as far as I'm aware."

"Okay," Ray said, trying to follow him.

"What I'm thinking is that looking for a physical solution to the problem might actually be looking in the wrong place. And what you said about a manual made me think...well, there is plenty of esoteric, that is to say, mystical or occult theory that would allow for a situation like this."

"You mean like, uh, voodoo, or Inuit lore, or something like that?"

"Yes. There are many other traditions as well that might have something to say about a spiritual transposition. There are, in layman's terms, manuals."

"Whoa." Ray had to think about that for a minute. "So you're saying there might actually be a trail we can follow, even if it's kind of unhinged and bizarre and queer?"

"Yes, that's what I'm saying, Ray."

Ray smiled in spite of the fact that he also felt like freaking out. "Good. Okay, good. Let's follow it. What do we do next?"

"Well, I believe we work on solving this crime, first of all, since it appears to be the point of convergence. You could also look through Rae's recent files to see if you notice anything else that seems glaringly different."

Ray pulled the car into the 2-7's parking lot and killed the engine. He settled both hands on the steering wheel and leaned his forehead on his hands. He felt Fraser's hand settle on his shoulder, warm and heavy.

"Ray."

"I'm okay, Frase, I'm holding it together here, I am. Just...."

"Yeah," Fraser said. "I know." His hand moved over Ray's back in a soothing pattern.

Ray felt something loosen there: his breathing, his muscles, maybe. "Are you a hundred percent sure this isn't some kind of unhinged dream, Fraser? I keep thinking I'm gonna wake up as myself and go make coffee like usual and...pray to God I never dream like this again."

"Some philosophers say all of life is a dream," Fraser said quietly. "But I'm afraid this is real. I'm sorry, Ray."

"Yeah, me, too."

"There's a theory," Fraser said, "well, more of a principle. It's essential to esoteric thought in many traditions. And it says that no one is given a problem or challenge that's too big for them to solve. You can know the scope of your abilities by the size of the problems you encounter."

"I must be pretty able, then," Ray said, his voice kind of muffled against his arm. Fraser's hand was still moving over his back, so big and warm. It felt like heaven.

"There's another principle," Fraser went on, his voice just as soothing as his hand on Ray's back, "that the seeds of the answer lie within the problem, and it's the seeker's job to find them and fertilize them, if you will, and let the solution unfold and grow."

"Fertilize, huh?" Ray said with a little smile. But then something twigged. "Fraser, you, uh...you and Rae...you weren't trying to have a baby, were you?"

Fraser started, then swiped his tongue out over his lower lip real fast. He thumbed his eyebrow. "Er, no, not at present. What makes you ask?"

"I don't know, just a thought. I always wanted kids, you know. I kind of wondered whether Rae did, too."

"She does," Fraser said. "I'm, er, I'm..." He rubbed his eyebrow. "I'm supportive of her goals, in general, of course. But I...well, I'm just not sure how good a father I'd be. So I'm...I'm a little..."

"You haven't signed on, huh? You're not on board with the kid idea?"

Fraser's hand slid off Ray's back. "Well, er...no. Not as such."

"Huh. Have you told her?"

Fraser didn't answer that. Instead, he said, "Do you think that relevant to the problem at hand?" and his voice was just this side of snippy, which Ray figured was pretty much an answer.

"I don't know. Just I got a queer feeling when I thought about it. Call it one of my hunches. I'll tell you if I get anything more." He knocked Fraser's arm gently with his fist. "C'mon, let's go in. Rae's stuck with my paperwork, which I know for a fact she can't see over my in-box, it's so full. I guess I better start tackling hers."

So they went in to give Welsh an update on the _Dino's_ case. Just as Ray should have expected, nobody batted an eyelash to see him walk into the building as a woman, because here, he'd always been a woman. And if he was walking a little funny or something because he wasn't really used to her body yet, to them that was just Rae walking funny. After all, who in their right mind would assume that life-entity thing had happened?

But walking was different, it was weird, it was kind of like he was dancing all the time. Even though Rae had skinny hips, they were still a woman's hips, and they kind of swayed.

And then there was the no-dick issue, which Ray tried not to think about, but which was always _there_ in the back of his mind. Thing was, he didn't _feel_ like he had no dick. His body was real sensitive between his legs, just like it should be, except in slightly different places. He just felt like he had a much smaller dick, like it was all shrunk up inside his body or something.

When he walked, he didn't feel the weight of his dick and balls against his thigh any more, but he was still used to walking like they were there. It probably made Rae look like something was wrong with the fit of her jeans or like she'd pulled something working out.

Bottom line, she'd look a little off, but it wasn't like anyone was going to figure out the reason in a million years.

Then there was the whole issue of what _was_ there that didn't use to be: the weight of Rae's breasts on his chest. She was small, but _any_ breasts felt really damn different, and since Ray had nixed the bra idea, he was also having to deal with the feeling of his nipples getting rubbed by his shirt. Rae's body was real sensitive there, and that was pretty distracting. Plus, it wasn't like he could control his nipples getting hard any more than he could control his dick getting hard, only with his nipples it happened a lot more often, and it didn't have to coincide with getting turned on: a cool breeze was enough to do it.

Then there was the fact that he kept banging file folders and other stuff into his chest (ouch), because he wasn't used to having to steer around a pair of tits. His gun had to sit a little lower in the holster and a little farther under his arm, and he had to stop squirming around trying to get it into the usual place, because the usual place now had a breast on top of it, and Ray'd already banged the gun into it once, which, _not_ a good idea.

Eventually Ray realized that maneuvering in Rae's body had to be like dancing or driving the GTO, where he got his mind out of the way and went totally on instinct. The body had muscle memory, after all, _it _knew Rae's usual moves, even if he didn't. So when Ray stopped thinking and just let this body move the way it was used to, his gait eased up, getting looser, more natural.

Ray had to go to the can when he got in, because better bladder or not, three large cups of joe were gonna catch up with anybody. He even remembered to head for the women's room instead of the men's, and lucky for him, when he went in, no one else was there. He was _not_ going to discuss makeup and haircuts and whatever other crap women discussed while primping in the mirror. He didn't do much primping himself. Spiked his hair up, and that was enough. And, hey, not having to shave his face? That was an actual advantage of this gig, he had to admit.

He checked himself out quickly in the mirror while washing his hands. Still a chick, still Rae, and there was no way to tell what normal was supposed to look like for her. But when he came out, Fraser was waiting for him, and he nodded briskly like Ray passed muster. Then he thumbed the side of his nose like Butch Cassidy. That was familiar, that was _them,_ and something in Ray relaxed a little. He thumbed the side of his nose right back like Sundance, and when they went together through the bullpen doors, in step as always, he felt almost normal.

That lasted only until he saw the first person he knew. Huey looked up and waved when Ray walked past his desk, and Dewey, perched on a corner of Huey's desk, even _smiled _at Ray, which was weird; they maybe would've acknowledged Ray's presence once in a while when he came into the station, but it was pretty unusual for them to do more than grunt, and they definitely didn't usually _smile_.

Frannie, on the other hand, gave him a measuring look and _didn't_ say hi, which was also backwards.

Welsh, though, seemed exactly the same as Ray's Welsh, except that he okayed the drag gig without even making a face about it, like he was totally confident Ray could do it.

Oh. Right. Ray actually had to look down at himself to remind himself why. Woman, yeah. Welsh didn't have any concerns about Ray looking the part because—news flash!—Ray looked the part.

"It concerns me that you'll be up there unarmed," Welsh said. "Especially seeing as your prime suspect knows who you are. I presume whatever costume they'll have you wearing won't let you conceal a weapon?"

"I don't know," Ray said. "We haven't talked about costumes yet. Damn, Fraser, I wish you would carry a gun for this one."

Fraser blinked. "I'll be armed, of course."

"Huh?"

Fraser thumbed open the flap of his holster—which in Ray's universe was always empty—and there was the butt of a Smith &amp; Wesson .38.

Fraser _carried? _Ray wondered how Rae had managed to talk him into that."Oh," he said. "Uh, yeah. Right. But you gotta wear off-duty clothes for this, Frase."

"I'll wear my shoulder holster under a jacket, Ray," Fraser said in his patient-sounding voice.

Jeez, there were so many little things Ray didn't know that he was going to need to know. When they went home tonight, he and Fraser were going to have to put their heads together and try to figure out what other pitfalls might be waiting for them.

"Okay," Ray said, feeling stupid. "Good."

"If you and Constable Fraser are quite finished with your cryptic conversation, Detective, I believe there are files from two months ago that have disappeared into the paperwork museum that is your desk. Kindly excavate them and put them back into circulation today so that we can all share in this important piece of Chicago history."

No, Welsh hadn't changed. It was kind of comforting, actually.

When they came out of Welsh's office, Ray started to turn left to go to his usual desk, last one before the back emergency exit, but he pulled up short when he saw Dewey sitting there yakking on the phone. Oh, right, this wasn't his 2-7. He was Rae. He banged himself in the head and turned to Fraser. "Point me to my desk?"

Fraser just led him there discreetly. Ray had Dewey's desk, on the other side of the bullpen. Crap. That was going to be harder to remember than staying out of the men's room.

A few hours, three-and-a-half cups of coffee, and two packs of M&amp;Ms later, Ray had worked Rae's in-box down to a level he could see over, and they hadn't found any differences in the files that seemed significant. A few things here or there, but they were minor beefs, nothing that had any of what Fraser called "symmetry" with Ray's body-swapping problem.

And Ray'd had it with sitting in the chair; he was going to jump out of his skin if he had to sit there any longer.

When he figured they'd processed enough files to satisfy Welsh even if he was having a heartburn day, Ray got up, stretched, and picked up the _Dino's Girls_ file. Even Fraser was looking a little tired by that point, and Dief was sacked out under Ray's desk and snoring loud enough to wake Mort's patients downstairs.

"C'mon Frase," Ray said. "Wake the wolf while I clear this with Welsh. I want to get out of here and get moving on the _Dino's_ case now while the trail's still hot."

So he stuck his head in Welsh's office and blew his mind by letting him know how much paperwork they'd knocked off, and Welsh okayed Ray's plan to leave now and start working on the _Dino's_ gig. Hopefully, the crime scene guys were wrapping up, and if Ray was going to have a shot at preventing another murder he had to get in there undercover, ASAP.

Ray had his own reasons to hurry, and first in line was that if Fraser was right (and, really, when wasn't he?) it was the only case that mattered if Ray was going to get his own life back.

They took off and went straight home—the home Rae shared with Fraser, anyway. Ray didn't need directions; once he'd been someplace he could always find it again. Since they'd lit out before rush hour, it didn't even take that long before they were inside, Ray throwing his keys down on the hall table and Fraser letting Dief out to run in the little backyard.

Ray undid his holster and went into the bedroom to lock his gun and extra rounds into the top drawer of the dresser, which was identical to the one he had in his own apartment, and the chore was so routine and normal that he could almost forget he wasn't in his own place in his own universe. There was the hook on the wall where he hung the holster to air out, there was the dish where he put his watch. Well, the dish where he usually put his watch when he could find it. He hadn't been able to find it this morning, so he hadn't put one on; the dish was empty.

He'd have to look around, he thought idly. He was always misplacing that damn thing; there was no reason why Rae wouldn't be the same kind of absent-minded as him. He almost felt _normal_ thinking that, almost felt like himself again—until he pulled off his shirts just like he would've done after work on a typical day in his own world, and...oh, right: tits. Christ. He used to _like_ seeing tits. Seeing tits up close and personal, or, heck, seeing them at all, used to have the potential to be a highlight of his day, on those few days that it happened.

At this rate, though, he might be ruined for them forever.

As if he wasn't already queer enough, this incident was probably gonna push him way off the fence and clear over into Gayville, never to be hetero again.

He mopped under his arms with the shirts and looked around for the hamper, finding it in the closet. He tossed the shirts at it...and missed by about a foot.

Damn.

Even without his glasses on, he should have been able to make that shot.

Ray took some deep breaths, trying to get calm before he had to go back out and face Fraser.

In the car coming home, he'd realized he was going to have to do some studying tonight, just like when he boned up on a new identity to prepare for an undercover job. He had to learn all about Rae and what stuff was different about her so that he didn't make stupid mistakes like not knowing where his desk was. It was one of the reasons he'd wanted to bug out of the station early.

He'd figured that with Fraser's help he could knock most of that off in one evening, at least well enough to get through the next day.

He also had to find some music he thought he could dance to and bring it with him in the morning.

But he'd forgotten something a lot more important. He had to teach himself how to _move _in this body, not just walk into the bullpen; that was easy. He had to figure out how to be a _cop_ in this smaller, lighter, much weaker, really goddamn different body. And he had to figure it out tonight.

He had his work cut out for him.

Because he couldn't even toss a couple of shirts at the hamper and make the shot. That meant he was damn lucky he hadn't run into any real trouble on the job today, because what if his aim with a gun was that far off, too? If there'd been trouble this morning, he could've gotten himself killed or wounded, or gotten a bystander hurt, or—

Oh, God.

He staggered back a few steps, till the backs of his legs touched the bed and buckled under him, and he dropped onto the bed. He could've gotten _Fraser_ hurt.

If he didn't get the hang of moving around in this body really damn soon, he was a walking liability to every other cop he worked with, and Fraser was at the top of that list, underlined in red.

Not to mention himself. But _Fraser._ Christ, he couldn't even think that....

Damn it, he needed to—his hands were shaking, he was, he was freaking out, here. He needed to think. He didn't have a clue how this other-universe stuff worked, but he was pretty sure that if he got killed here, he was never going to get the chance to see his own Fraser again, and that thought hit him in the gut like a brass-knuckle punch.

He didn't know what would happen to Rae if he died: whether she'd die, too, or whether she'd be stuck in his body forever. Probably die, he figured. Louis Gardino was dead in this universe, just like in his. He'd known the guy a little; bowled with him and a bunch of other cops a couple of times, and even worked with him and Huey on a bust once when Ray was still at the 18th. He didn't remember the actual date of the murder from his own world, but he remembered it'd been early winter, snowing a little the day of the funeral. He'd never forget it, like he'd never forget any cop's funeral he'd been to. They all hit too close to home; every one you went to was one that wasn't yours—but could be.

Near as he could figure from the file he'd seen at the station, that tragic incident had gone down here pretty much the same way it had in his own universe.

Either way, if Ray fucked up and got himself killed in Rae's body, there would be two Benton Frasers who would never get their own partners back, and that didn't bear thinking about.

Ray swallowed the sudden bitter taste in his throat and scrubbed a hand over his face. Dammit, he wasn't going to be a big fucking cliché and _cry,_ was he? He went out into the living room to find Fraser.

He found him over by the sliding door that led onto the backyard, staring out, probably watching Dief. Fraser turned—and froze, his eyes widening and a blush stealing over his cheeks.

"What? What's the matter?"

"Ray, you're..." Fraser sighed. "Er...Rae doesn't walk around like...like that." His tongue flicked out over his lower lip and disappeared just as quickly, a gesture so familiar that it made Ray's throat ache.

Ray looked down. Oh. Right—no shirt. His perfect little female breasts just _there, _out in the open for anyone to see, his nipples perking up in the cooler air in the room.

It really _should _have been okay, right? A guy—well, a person—in his own house had a right to take his shirt off to cool down, didn't he?

But Ray knew the answer to that. If the _person_ was male, he could. If the person was female, no. Gotta cover up. Which Ray understood that, because, being a guy, he knew how guys, even husbands, couldn't help_ reacting_ if their women walked around that way.

Didn't make it right, did it?

Didn't make it right that a girl had to cover up like there was something wrong with her, like it was her _fault_ somehow that guys couldn't be grown-ups about something this simple. Everybody had nipples, for Chrissakes. Everybody had tits; women's were just bigger.

So why did a woman deserve to get stared at funny if she took her shirt off? It was a question that Ray'd never even thought about before. It was one of those obvious things, right? Women got stared at because they were _women,_ that was the way the world was. Guys stared at Frannie in her microscopic skirts every other day, and if Ray was around, he got up in their faces and growled at them to back off like he was some kind of guard dog.

He couldn't remember telling the guys to grow up, not even once. He'd only ever told them to back off, keep their paws off his sister. And then he'd usually gone back and yelled at Frannie, telling her she was cruising for trouble with those damn skirts and those ridiculous shirts and no bra, and would she please just humor Ray and put on some real clothes for once, because she was getting a rep, and one of these days he was gonna have to kick some heads and then he'd probably get suspended over it.

But he'd never thought about telling the men to buy a goddamned clue. After this morning with that asshole O'Malley, and now with even _Fraser_ looking at him funny, Ray was beginning to twig to how screwed up that was.

When push came to shove came to shouting match, Ray hadn't been quick to agree to put on that medieval torture thing called a "bra," had he?

"Uh, sorry." Ray didn't know what else to say, and at the same time he felt like an idiot for saying it. "I was hot."

Fraser drew in an audible breath, like he was deliberately trying to calm down. Ray was pretty sure Fraser wasn't turned on. He figured maybe Fraser was mad or something, although that didn't really make sense, either, not for Fraser.

But, dammit, Ray was stuck in this body right now, and this place was his own goddamn home, or as close to his own home as anyplace in this insane universe could be. He had to make Fraser understand something, because he wasn't going to sneak around pretending even on his own turf, even with Fraser.

So Ray didn't cover his breasts and he didn't go looking for another shirt. He was gonna cool off first, and Fraser was gonna have to get over it.

"Look, it's like I'm undercover here."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Being her, it's like being undercover, just with a hell of a convincing disguise. And undercover's tough, Fraser."

"I know that."

"It takes a toll on you. You gotta have some place, some private place, even if it's only inside your head, where you can still be you. Otherwise it can get too easy to lose yourself in the part, you know? Lose track of your job, maybe lose track of your ethics. It can be real dangerous."

"You're not undercover as an unethical person, Ray."

"Yeah, I know that, but this gig's got its own freaky aspects. It's worse in a lot of ways." He swallowed. "Look, I got to get this body up to speed_ tonight." _He punctuated that by stabbing a couple of fingers at the air. "I don't know how to move in it, Fraser. I don't know if I can pull my gun and shoot straight. I just missed the hamper with a couple of shirts from three feet away, a shot I could usually make blindfolded.

"You know what that means? It means I'm a danger to any cop I work with. I gotta get this straightened out now, or I gotta ask Welsh for some kind of leave or something. Like a sick leave. Maybe I can tell him I'm coming down with the flu."

"You can't do that. That would delay our work on the case and possibly interfere with your returning to your own life." Fraser looked at him reproachfully and _didn't_ say, "Besides, it would be a lie and therefore dishonorable, and I expect better of you, Ray," but then again, he really didn't have to. Ray read him loud and clear.

He sighed kind of hard. "Yeah. I know. I'm just not real happy about trying to do the cop job that I know how to do with a body I'm not used to. Hell, with a body that's _weak..._and..."

"Rae is not weak, Ray."

"Okay, maybe not for a girl. But she's a hell of a lot weaker than I'm used to being."

Fraser nodded, not like he agreed, but like he wanted Ray to go on.

"And it's not just physical strength. I don't got the...the cred I had as a guy. I get up in someone's face, they're not gonna be afraid of these little fists."

"Are you a large man, then?" Fraser asked, and the look on his face almost scared Ray. It was a hollow look, an empty look, a look that showed how deep the wound went that Rae was not here and nobody knew when—or whether—Rae would ever be back.

Ray couldn't let himself imagine that. Rae _would _come back to her Fraser, he told himself. Ray was _not_ going to let this Fraser lose the woman he clearly loved so much.

Ray was going to be himself again, too, and be back with his own Fraser: as partners, friends, whatever Fraser wanted. He had to swallow real hard to get enough voice to answer. "No, I'm...no. Same height as you, but I can't quite nudge the scale up to 160 even with my boots on. I'm pretty strong for my size, though."

Fraser was nodding. "So it's really not your size that you use to, er, intimidate people."

"Okay, so you got a point. It's not about size." That line might've been funny some other day. "Maybe it's not even about attitude. I don't know what attitude to have, what attitude's gonna be convincing. Because usually, even undercover, I know what raw material I'm working with. But now...Fraser, when people look at me, they don't see _me._ They see a...chick." His stomach was twisting up again, like it hadn't since this morning.

Fraser blinked at him like Ray was missing something obvious, and after a second, Ray remembered: bare breasts. Yeah, they were probably pretty obvious. Still, Fraser seemed a little upset, even, to be seeing them.

"Fraser, how can you be her husband and still be freaking out over seeing her breasts? You've seen 'em before. Kind of a lot."

Fraser took a couple steps toward him, his eyes big and blue and intense. "Because you look so much like her. And yet you're not Rae."

"This _is _her body, Frase."

"Yes. I'm afraid I'm not feeling entirely rational about the, er, predicament we find ourselves in." Fraser stopped and scratched at his eyebrow.

Ray sighed. "Okay. Okay." He put his hands up, like he was placating him, which was silly, 'cause Fraser didn't need placating. He needed...Christ, what Ray'd need in his place would be something more like a good strong hug. "You need that hug now? Offer stands."

Fraser drew a shaky breath. "I don't think now would be a good time, Ray. But I appreciate the offer."

"Okay." Ray took a step back. "Okay. I'm going to go scare up something I can wear to exercise, and I'm gonna get to work trying to figure out how Ginger did it backwards and in heels."

To his surprise, Fraser didn't give him a funny look about that—well, no funnier than he was already looking at him, anyway. So maybe Fred and Ginger had made it up to the Yukon Territories at some point in Fraser's bizarre childhood.

Fraser just said, real intently, "I'll give you any help I can."

"I know, buddy, I know." As Ray turned to go back to the bedroom, he found himself hoping that between the two of them it'd be enough.

 


	5. One Step at a Time

  
Ray found some gym shorts and another tank top in Rae's dresser, and while Fraser puttered around in the kitchen making dinner, Ray pushed the coffee table out of the way in the living room and got started figuring out how the new body moved. He tried to gauge how strong it was by doing some pushups and sit-ups and stuff; he got through those exercises okay, but since he weighed a lot less than usual, he figured it was probably a wash. He'd have to test himself against something that remained constant, like weights or a heavy bag or, heck, Fraser.

Moving around in this body was weird, that was for sure, and the breasts were far from the biggest issue when it came to the kinds of physical challenges he might face on the job. The biggest issues were balance and coordination. Going down to wherever Rae worked out and shooting some hoops or something wouldn't be a bad idea, he figured, even though basketball wasn't usually his thing. He wondered whether she boxed at all.

He danced around the living room a bit, throwing shadow punches and ducking and feinting right and left, and he figured that if she didn't actually box she could pick it up pretty quick, because she was limber, wow...even more than him, and he was pretty bendy for a guy.

Eventually he figured he'd done all he could without an actual gym, and he'd have to book a time at the shooting range, too, but he couldn't do either of those things tonight.

So, while Fraser cooked, Ray flipped through Rae's CDs, which were pretty much the same as what he had. He figured he had to find something he could dance to without thinking too much. Something from back when he used to go out dancing with Stella would be perfect.

That'd be something Eighties, he figured, so he started there, pulling out a few CDs, rejecting them, pulling out a few more: too slow, too stupid, too Beatles, too ABBA...wait, Eurythmics. "Who's That Girl?"—hah. Couldn't be more appropriate or, what'd Fraser call it? Symmetrical, yeah. He popped the disc into the stereo and hit Play, and whoa, yeah, that was about as high tech as music got in the Eighties. Sounded pretty dated now. He listened to Annie Lennox's sweet voice for a minute, remembering, but then he hit the stop button and took the CD out. Too slow, too dated, and the lyrics were stupid and repetitious. He had to find something that would sound worth hearing in 1999—and no, Ray was not going to do Prince, whatever the guy was calling himself now.

A few more Eurythmics albums had been stacked next to the first. Huh. Ray checked them and found a bunch of song titles, all of which kind of spooked him, sent a shiver up his spine, because talk about symmetry:

_It_ _'_ _s All Right (Baby_ _'_ _s Coming Back)_   
_Would I Lie to You?_   
_Love is a Stranger_   
_I Need a Man_

Great titles, but none of them was quite right. He'd almost given up when his eye lit on a title that looked familiar_: Sisters Are Doing It for Themselves._ More symmetry. He smiled, and popped the disc in, and oh, yeah, and he remembered it now: Annie had sung that with _Aretha,_ and the song _rocked._ Stella liked it a lot, and Ray remembered exactly how she'd looked dancing to it. Yeah. Ray could use some of those moves now that he was built a lot like her. He might even be convincing.

He put the disc in, hit play, and let himself move to the music. This might actually work, and the best thing of all was that if he danced to a Eurythmics song, he could do it in guy clothes, because Annie'd had that gender-bending look going. No dress! Ray was all for that. He didn't figure Rae owned a men's suit, but it wasn't like he couldn't go rent one at a costume shop or something. He wondered what she used for dancing shoes, but he could investigate her closet later.

His eyes were closed and he wasn't really paying attention to anything but the music, just grooving to it and letting himself _be _for the moment—not man, not woman, just being—so he didn't hear Fraser come up behind him, and he almost jumped out of his skin when Fraser said, "Are you ready for some dinner, Ray?"

Ray changed his startle motion into a jazz turn and stopped about two inches from Fraser, nose to...well, nose to chin, because he wasn't the same height as Fraser any more. And—hah—it was Fraser's turn to jump. You had to give the Mountie credit, though; he stood his ground. "Er...dinner's ready," he said again.

"Heard you the first time, Fraser." Ray smiled at him. "Thanks."

"It's no trouble, Ray. You have a lot of preparations to make, and besides, you don't even know your way around this kitchen." He started to turn away.

Ray put a hand on his arm. "I'll learn," he said.

Fraser turned back with kind of a queer look on his face.

Ray shrugged. "I don't know how long I'm going to be here. I hope not long, I hope you get your Rae back real soon, and believe me, I'm gonna work my ass off to see that that happens. But that don't mean you should get stuck with all the chores. I pretty much suck at cleaning, I gotta tell you. But I can cook, that's one thing I can do."

"All right," Fraser said, swallowing.

"We gotta eat, right?" It was weird to have to reassure Fraser. Wasn't Fraser the one who was always overconfident, always making light of stuff that would freak normal people?

"True."

"All right, and we got work to do, too. There's a million things I don't know about Rae. I don't want to...I'm not trying to pry into stuff that she, that you'd be uncomfortable sharing, but there's gonna be stuff I'm gonna need to know..."

"I understand. It's all right, Ray. I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"Anything?"

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow. "We have no way of knowing what might be important—or crucial. I'll tell you anything."

"The idea doesn't bother you? Telling a...a stranger?"

"You're not a stranger, Ray. I don't know quite how to categorize you, but you're certainly not a stranger." He looked away for a second. "If, ah...if I'm truly unhinged enough to believe that you're from another...dimension, for the lack of a better term, the only other person you could possibly _be_ is Rae. And I'd tell her anything.

"And if you are who I believe you to be, it can only help matters for you to know anything you think might be important. I trust your intuition."

Ray couldn't help smiling at that. "You do, huh?"

"As I trust hers," Fraser said, sounding 100% sure.

"Thanks, buddy." He knew he was grinning like a moron. He ducked his head and went into the bedroom to find a pair of jeans.

  
Still and all, dinner was kind of quiet and weird until Ray shook himself and started asking Fraser the stuff he needed to know about Rae. A lot of it was similar to Ray's history, but then again, a lot was different. Rae'd been held hostage in a bank robbery in 1974, just like Ray, but hadn't wet herself. Women had better bladders, Ray figured. Turned out she'd burst into tears instead, really freaked out and bawled, and that had distracted Ellery enough to make him let go of Stella, who'd run out and alerted the cop on the corner and later praised Rae for her "quick thinking and convincing performance." Rae and Stella had been best friends for years after that.

Still, Fraser said, Rae had counted the incident a personal failure, and she'd had a similar reaction to Ray's: she'd decided to be a cop then and there, so she could keep dirtbags like Ellery from scaring little girls half to death and making them embarrass themselves in public. She didn't box, 'cause back in the Seventies, girls mostly didn't. Of course, girls mostly didn't go to the police academy, either. But Rae didn't have the upper-body heft for boxing, so she played soccer instead, on a local team, and she was pretty good.

She was an even better cop, Fraser told him, and had made detective early on like him, too. And she was a crack shot, but only with her glasses on. Just like Ray.

Rae had never been married before her marriage to Fraser. She and Stella had been best friends, for sure, women best friends and even roommates, but not lovers. And they weren't on real good terms any more. Stella had finally gotten fed up with Rae and called it quits. Fraser didn't say that in so many words, but Ray was pretty good at reading between the lines of an Eskimo Joe story by now. Bottom line: apparently Stella was Stella in any universe.

Ray took that in, trying to imagine what his life might have been like if he and Stella had just been friends, but he couldn't really wrap his brain around the idea: it would have changed everything. He couldn't let himself sit and think about that, because a freakout would probably come on, and Ray freaking out was not going to get him back to his own body and his own life any sooner.

So he pushed back from the table and got up and started picking up dishes. "Ray, let me..." Fraser started to say, giving him a weird look, like Ray'd done something unexpected.

"Fraser. I am not a guest here."

Fraser stared at him for a long minute, then gave in, nodding and stepping out of the way so Ray could get the job done. So Ray stacked dishes in the dishwasher and washed pots, and Fraser watched for a minute and then went out the back door, pulling the slider closed behind him.

When he came back in, Ray was pretty much finished. He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and came out of the kitchen to see Fraser locking the door.

"Dief?" Ray asked.

"He wants to spend the night outside," Fraser said. "We, er, have a little shelter out there should he need it, but he won't, tonight. It's quite mild."

"Especially for an Arctic wolf, I know," Ray said. "He better not howl at the moon and keep the neighborhood awake."

"Oh, he knows better than to do that. He's had run-ins with the city dogcatchers before."

"Hope he's not planning on jumping the fence and knocking up half the female dogs in this zip code," Ray said, grinning.

"Oh, I'm sure he is," Fraser said. "but fortunately most of the pet owners in this neighborhood are responsible. If the females aren't spayed, they're kept indoors at night, especially when they're in heat."

"Aw. And here I thought dogs had all the luck," Ray said, and it was almost _normal,_ something he'd have said to Fraser in his own body, two guys together, commiserating about the lack of ready and willing females.

Only it had never been exactly like that with Ray and Fraser, had it? It had just been Ray making those stupid, can't-catch-a-break comments, and Fraser had always either said nothing or said "hmm" or made some other totally noncommittal answer. In fact, now that he thought about it, Fraser had just been doing his usual polite thing. Because it apparently _didn't_ bother Fraser that Ray wasn't getting any female attention, and Fraser himself got more female attention than he wanted or knew what to do with.

"Is that what you wanted to do, in your life?" Fraser asked suddenly.

"What, knock up females?"

"Well...yes. Have children. Be a father."

"Yeah," Ray said. "Sure. I wanted kids, but it turned out Stella had different plans."

"You married _Stella? _Stella Forrest, the assistant state's attorney?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I should have mentioned it before. I was kind of...lost in thought, I guess."

"I can imagine."

"Yeah, well. Stella and me aren't on the best of terms in my world, either. We, uh...we got divorced."

"Do you still think about having a family?" Fraser asked, finally moving away from the door and coming closer to Ray, but stopping with the dining room table between them.

"Yeah," Ray admitted, leaning back against the archway between the kitchen and the dining room. "Yeah, I do. It's not looking too likely at this point. I mean, in my own life, when I was back there."

"I don't see why not," Fraser said. "You're young."

Ray sighed. "I'm young, sure, but, um...there's complications now. For one thing, no wife, and, uh, no real prospects in that direction right now, even if I wasn't being Vecchio. Women aren't exactly falling all over themselves to date me. They're falling all over _you..._I mean, my Fraser, but he don't seem to care. He doesn't give most of them the time of day. Even the ones he seems to like, there's always a complication, like she's married or she's a dangerous criminal."

Fraser's face darkened. "I understand."

It looked like this Fraser'd had his share of run-ins with women who were trouble, maybe even the same women that Ray's Fraser had run into. Ray figured he didn't need to know in order to get the job done here.

"Look, I'm glad you found the right woman for you," Ray said gently. "All I want to do is help you get her back."

"I know that, Ray, and I'm grateful." Fraser sighed.

They stood there staring at each other for what seemed like an hour, but was really only a minute at most. Ray finally cleared his throat and looked away. "Okay, well, I gotta..." he gestured at the room. "I should, uh, look through everything here, get totally familiar with the house and stuff."

"Good idea," Fraser said. "I've got, er, I think I'll read."

"Okay." So Ray turned away and started opening cabinets and drawers and looking at framed pictures and after a moment he heard Fraser leave and go into the bedroom. Ray didn't hear him shut the door. It could just have meant that Fraser wanted to be able to hear what Ray was doing, but Ray didn't think so. It seemed to him like Fraser was telling him he wasn't shutting him out, and that was good. That, Ray could work with.

Ray worked on the getting-to-know-Rae thing for as long as he could, which came to about an hour and a half, and then he got to feeling like he was going to jump out of his—well, Rae's—skin if he puttered around the house any longer, with Fraser silent in the bedroom, the silence radiating like energy, like the Great Wall of the Yukon between them, instead of the not-a-thing that silence was supposed to be.

It was only nine o'clock, too early for Ray to crash, and he was tired, but he wasn't ready to sleep. He stuck his head into the bedroom, saw Fraser in the easy chair, still intent on his book.

"Fraser, I gotta..." He gestured. "Go out or something. We need anything from the grocery store? I could go kind of learn my way around the neighborhood for a little while and pick up whatever."

"I don't think we need anything," Fraser said after a minute.

_Except Rae back,_ Ray thought. _Yeah, buddy, I know. _He didn't say it, though.

"All right, then, I'll, uh—" He waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the street.

Fraser scrambled out of the chair, tossing his book on the bed without even marking his place. "I'll go with you."

"You don't have to. I'm a big boy—uh, I'm an adult, Fraser."

"I—I realize that, Ray. I'm sorry, I just..."

His wife's body, right. "Look...I got a vested interest in the safety of this body," Ray said.

"All right, then." Fraser cleared his throat. "Rae takes her gun when she goes out."

"She does? You're not putting me on?"

"Of course not."

Ray locked eyes with him. Fraser stared back calmly. No challenge there, or at least not one that anybody was admitting to.

"All right," Ray said finally. "Okay, I'll...I usually wear mine, too. You and me, we have...yeah. Fraser and me, I mean. We have enough off-duty incidents, makes sense."

"That's what Rae says."

"Yeah?"

"Actually she says being my partner can be rather hazardous."

"That's a fact." Ray crossed to the dresser for his gun and took the holster off the wall, started to shoulder into it. "Tell me something, though. How'd she get you to start carrying your own weapon? My Fraser, he hasn't carried since he first came to Chicago, and I've never been able to talk him into it."

"She married me, Ray."

"Huh?"

"I was granted permanent resident alien status, Ray. The 'green card.' It made the paperwork much easier."

Ray snorted. "You're a cop liaising with the Chicago PD. Welsh could've pushed the paperwork through for you easy."

Fraser tugged at the already-loose collar of his Henley and looked away.

"Anyway, you know Illinois law. If we're in a serious situation, and I, a sworn peace officer, ask you to take my gun and even maybe use it, you got every right to do it. I don't gotta swear you in as a deputy or nothing. If I need help during the lawful performance of my sworn duty, I got a right to ask any citizen—or alien—for help, up to and including them discharging my weapon, if necessary. You think they're not gonna let my _partner_ carry?"

"Well, I do carry my gun now, Ray," Fraser said kind of distantly, "so your point is moot."

"No it's not. It is not moot. It is very _germane,_ Fraser. My Fraser still doesn't carry, and he risks my life not carrying, not to mention _his_ life, and I'd love to know how to convince him otherwise."

Fraser had looked up sharply at "germane," and he stared at Ray now as he got up out of the chair.

"He taught me that," Ray said, clicking into Fraser's wavelength just like he would have with his own Fraser, which was another reason it was so hard to think of them as separate people. "Taught me a whole dictionary's worth of two-dollar words." He checked the safety on his gun and tucked it securely into the holster, maneuvering around Rae's left breast just in time not to bang the grip into it.

Fraser came to within a foot or so of Ray and then stopped, still staring. "I find it...uncanny. How like Rae you are."

Ray glanced down at his—Rae's—body with a smirk.

"I mean, your expressions, your...the things you say. Your history. She asked me about the word 'germane' in the—"

"In the crypt," Ray said.

"Yes."

"She went looking for Marcus Ellery at his mother's burial?"

"Exactly."

"She catch him?"

"She said he got away."

So, Fraser suspected that wasn't the whole truth? Damn sharp Mountie, sharp as a razor. Ray smiled. He figured that was Rae's lookout. He wasn't going to tell tales out of school. Then he sighed. "Is it because Rae's a woman? Is that why you agreed to carry your gun?"

"I'm afraid I don't follow."

"Is it because you're more afraid she can't take care of herself than you would be if she were a man?"

"If she were a man, she wouldn't be my wife," Fraser said, cocking his head and peering closely at Ray like he did when he was trying to figure out what the heck Ray was talking about.

Ray reached out and clapped him on the arm. "There's where you're wrong, Fraser. She's a man now."

"You have me very confused, Ray."

"Yeah, well, join the club. Just, uh, think about it, okay? I want to know what really convinced you to carry a gun in Chicago. If you figure it out while I'm still here, I'd, uh, really appreciate it if you'd tell me."

"Are you sure that's not...tampering with..."

"Fraser." Ray pinned him with a look. "She is a man right this minute. She is a cop. And her partner, one Benton Fraser, RCMP, doesn't carry."

Fraser went white. "Oh. I see."

Ray put his hands up, gripped Fraser by both upper arms. "Look, I'm not trying to scare you. I've been doing okay, and Fraser, he's got like some kind of, I don't know, magic working around him. Most of the time, he gets out of situations without even messing up his uniform. And I wasn't working on anything major this week. No mob bosses gunning for me, nobody coming up on parole that I gotta worry about. The voodoo thing is over, and nobody got hurt, not even my car, thank the little baby Jesus. I think Rae'll manage fine.

"I'm just asking for me, for when I get back. And for him."

"All right. I'll give it some thought," Fraser said.

"You tell me as soon as you got any idea, okay?" Ray said. "I don't know how long I'm going to be here."

"I will."

"Okay." Ray let him go. "I'll be back in a little while, then."

"Are you sure you don't want me to accompany you?"

"I'll be fine. I'll take my cell phone, too. You know the number, I'm sure."

"Of course. And Rae has this number on her speed dial. Number one."

"Good, 'cause I can't remember numbers for shit."

"I know," Fraser said, and he didn't even add, "Rae doesn't, either."

He didn't have to, because they both understood that Ray _was_ Rae in some kind of weird way. He knew her. He was beginning to know her like an undercover cop knows his cover, but even closer than that, because he wasn't creating a character, he was being _himself—_himself as a woman, but still in some freaky way, himself.

He grabbed his keys, his phone, his jacket, and went out before he let himself think any more, because, again, that would lead to a freakout, he was pretty sure, and nobody needed a Ray freakout right about now. Least of all him.

When Ray came back, the house was pretty quiet, but Fraser was still up reading. He had a cold mug of tea on the table next to the easy chair, but otherwise there was no sign that he'd gotten out of the chair.

He also didn't seem to have gotten much further in the book. And when Ray came in and put his keys in the dish and his holster on the hook and locked his gun away, Fraser watched him with sad blue eyes the entire time.

Ray felt kind of bad, then, for going out. He'd needed the fresh—well, the air, anyway. And he'd needed to stretch his legs and check out the neighborhood, and he'd gotten all of that done, but it looked like his little jaunt had played hell with Fraser's nerves, and that was not buddies.

He suddenly felt like a jerk for insisting on going alone. Hell, he wasn't the only one who'd lost his world.

The thought startled him: Rae as Fraser's world. On its heels came another, even more startling thought: imagine _Ray_ as his Fraser's_..._jeez, he couldn't start thinking like that. He could deal with it when he got home to his own body, his own Fraser. His Fraser might be straight, but, damn, best friends was nothing to sneeze at, either.

So he went over to the armchair and put his hand on Fraser's shoulder and squeezed. "Hey, buddy."

"Hello, Ray."

"I'm fine."

"I can see that."

"Good. And I learned my way around the neighborhood, so I should be good to go tomorrow."

"Good to go where?"

Ray rolled his eyes.

"Oh," Fraser said. "Colorful American expression?"

"Right." Ray turned and pulled his tank shirt off, aiming it at the hamper and making the shot this time. So maybe his dancing around and stuff had helped some. He hoped so.

He unbuckled his jeans and shoved them down, started to pull them off, wondering at the same time what Rae wore to sleep. Oh, yeah, right, he'd woken up naked this morning. So she slept in her skin, same as Ray; that was good. He pushed the underwear down, too, stepped out of the jeans and underwear together, and stood on one foot and then the other to pull his socks off, and—neat, he actually had better balance than ever this way. Lower center of gravity or something. Cool.

Behind him, he heard Fraser catch his breath sharply. Damn, Ray'd done it again.

He turned back to Fraser. "Look, Fraser, it's not like I really want you to pretend I'm her, not at all. But, just...you don't have to freak every time I show some skin. It's _her_ skin, you've seen it a thousand times before."

"I—I know, Ray."

"I'm not trying anything hinky here. I'm just getting ready for bed; I'm tired."

"Understandable."

"You?"

"I, er...I'll get my bedroll and take it into the living room," Fraser said, not looking at him.

Ray found Rae's bathrobe where he'd left it, on a hook just inside the closet, and pulled it on, tying the belt firmly. Then he went back over to Fraser. "You talking about sleeping out there? That's stupid."

"Well, we don't have a bed in the spare room yet, Ray, and the couch isn't really big enough for me."

"We don't know how long I'm going to be here," Ray said, trying to be patient. "I could wake up in my own body tomorrow, and Rae could wake up here. God, I hope so."

"But you don't really expect to," Fraser said, his voice hushed, maybe even a little strained.

"Nah, not really. Your theory that I got to do something here, that makes more sense. But we don't really know. Anyway, there's no point in hurting your back."

"Oh, I'm quite accustomed to roughing it, Ray."

Ray snorted. "Sure, 'cause it's not like you fell off any fire escapes, jumped into any lakes, got dragged by any speeding getaway cars in the last month, is it?"

"Well, there was just that incident with the—"

Ray didn't even wait for details. He probably knew them, anyway, and no doubt it would piss him off just to think about them again. "Yeah, I knew it, just like the Fraser who's my crazy partner. Listen: your back, the floor—not the best combination these days, my friend. Sleep in the bed, no arguing."

Fraser sighed. It sounded like he was giving in.

So Ray pressed his advantage. "Sleep in the bed, Fraser. Don't worry, I'm too tired to molest you. Don't have a dick, anyway. Your wife has my dick."

Yeah, Ray could get Rae's size nines in her mouth easy. Fraser went a little pale around the gills. But all did was say, little huffily, "I shouldn't have to remind a Chicago police officer that sexual assault does not require a penis."

_"Fraser."_

"All right," Fraser said after a minute.

So Ray went and washed up real quick, and came back and slipped out of the robe, hanging it up on its hook and avoiding both the mirror and Fraser's eyes. He got into the bed on the left side, the same side where he'd woken up, and he heard Fraser put the book down and turn out the light.

"Night, Fraser."

"Good night, Ray."

Ray must have dozed a bit, because the next thing he knew, he was feeling Fraser's weight pressing the mattress down, and then Fraser was sliding into the bed next to him. And lying still. Really, really still. Really, really still and really, really tense. So tense the sheet was quivering on Ray's shoulder.

There was no way Ray was going to sleep with that big knot of tension lying in the bed next to him, so he turned over. He could make out Fraser's face dimly in the light coming in from the street. Light glimmered in the whites of Fraser's eyes.

"Seems weird for me to have to tell _you_ to relax, but...relax, Fraser. You gotta sleep. We both gotta sleep. Big day tomorrow."

Fraser just sighed, a long slow rise and fall of his breath.

"I know. This is crazy. And you're worrying and stuff. Listen, she's smart. And Fraser's there with her. She'll tell him what happened. He'll help her."

"How can you be so sure?" Fraser whispered, echoing Ray's words of long ago.

"Because I know him," Ray said. "He's my partner. And my friend."

"Yes," Fraser said. His hand moved under the sheet, just twitched, like maybe it wanted to reach for him, except Fraser wouldn't let it.

And Ray got it, then, because he knew—he sure as hell _knew_ what it was like to have the physical companionship of your wife suddenly _gone _when you'd come to depend on it, when you needed it like food and water, when you'd depended on having her there every day.

He imagined what it would've been like to have Stella around but really _not,_ to have Stella actually in bed with him, but to feel like he couldn't even touch her.

It would be like all those moments when he ran into her at the station, happy to see her, only to have her frown at him instead of just say hello, or when he asked her out, only to have her shoot him down in front of everyone he worked with.

His heart went out to Fraser. He reached for Fraser's hand and got a good grip on it. "He's the best guy in the world, Fraser. I promise you she could not be in better hands."

He heard Fraser swallow really, really hard. "I hope so," Fraser whispered.

"And I'm here for you, buddy. I may not be her, but I'm the closest substitute, and you gotta trust me, I _do_ know you. I would know you in any universe, Fraser. I'm here for you just like I am for my Fraser, when I'm being myself."

"Thank you," Fraser whispered back, but his voice still sounded so strained, like it cost him to say even that much.

Ray moved closer, leaned up over him. "Something you forgot," he whispered. He was so close to Fraser's lips, God, so close. He could feel Fraser's soft breath on his cheek.

"What's that?" Fraser breathed, another soft puff of air.

Ray leaned in and brushed his lips over Fraser's—oh, yeah, as soft and sweet as he'd remembered. "Goodnight kiss." Fraser didn't kiss him back, but he didn't pull away, either. Ray pressed his lips against Fraser's again, and this time he left them there. He felt the exact moment when Fraser gave in, opening his mouth under Ray's just enough, flicking his tongue inside Ray's lips.

There was a swift, sweet contact of their tongues, and then it was withdrawn, but Fraser still held on to Ray's hand, and his other hand came up to touch Ray's hair. And God, Ray wanted so badly to press up against Fraser's side, to hold him and be held, but he didn't. He wasn't going to do anything that would make Fraser grab his bedroll and escape to the living room.

"I thought you said you wouldn't," Fraser said, breathing a little hard.

"Wasn't. I just needed..." He'd just needed to make contact. To touch, if only a little.

"Oh," Fraser said. "Yes." Which, Ray knew, was Fraser's way of saying he'd needed it, too.

"Thanks. For not pushing me away."

"Ray—" Fraser's voice broke on the word.

Ray cupped his free hand around Fraser's shoulder. "It's okay, buddy."

Fraser swallowed hard. "I don't want to push you away. Quite the opposite, Ray. But I—I can't..."

"Shh. I know. It's okay. Just...thanks."

Fraser squeezed his hand and then let it go. So Ray let go, too, and slid back over to his own side of the bed.

And damn, Ray wanted him. Wanted him like he always did, except Fraser wasn't usually just inches away when Ray was lying in bed aching with need for him.

Usually he could punch the pillow a few times—heck, usually he could jerk off and then fall asleep and hope to dream about one day_ getting_ what he wanted.

The thought sent a shiver up his naked body all the way to his scalp. Because, really, how did he know he'd ever actually woken up? What if this whole thing was one of those dreams—or a nightmare, the weirdest one he'd ever had? Or what if it was like the _Twilight Zone_ and he got a wish he asked for, wished he could be with Fraser, and this was the Be Careful What You Wish For moral of the story?

Because that was kind of what was happening here. He got to be Fraser's goddamn _wife,_ except that he was also still Ray, so that Fraser wouldn't touch him, Fraser would lie in a bed next to him and not want to touch him, even though there wasn't even the "Sorry, Ray, my friend, but I'm not gay" excuse?

But Ray couldn't think about that, it'd freak him out too much, and anyway, he knew he was awake. This adventure was real even if it was freakier than chasing a pirate ship on Lake Superior or trying to find a voodoo zombie on the lam from Mort's lab.

Under the covers, Ray's whole body twitched convulsively, even though he tried hard to be still. The motion probably disturbed Fraser, but it wasn't as bad as a freakout, Ray thought. But then Fraser's hand snaked over and covered his, gently, not demandingly, not telling Ray to quiet down, just offering comfort.

Just letting Ray know he wasn't alone in the darkness.

Ray's eyes filled up, but in the dark not even Fraser would see that, especially since Ray had his face half-turned towards the wall and he didn't actually spill over. After a minute, he turned his hand over and laced his fingers gently into Fraser's, and it felt so natural, so good.

It was enough to let him drop off to sleep, Fraser anchoring him to whatever passed for reality here. Ray'd held Fraser's hand plenty of times before, of course, for one reason or another, mostly to pull each other up out of whatever they'd fallen into on the job, but no matter how platonic either of them thought it was, it was never casual. Couldn't be.

Fraser's hand was always a lifeline, and Ray's hand had been that for Fraser just as many times.

But this, this holding hands in bed—this was new, of course, this was something Ray's Fraser hadn't done, maybe wouldn't do, and considering how much Ray needed it right now, he thought it was better than all the other times put together.

It was so good that when he felt himself drifting off, he didn't even remember to make the wish that he'd wake up in the morning in his own body.

 


	6. New Moves

Ray woke from a dream he didn't remember. He had only vague impressions: running, shooting, maybe even delivering a kick or two in the head, but that stuff was pretty standard in his work-related dreams. When he came fully awake he noticed two things: one, he was alone in the bed, though the warmth still left in the indentation next to him meant that he hadn't been alone for long. And B, he was turned on. He wasn't _hard,_ of course, since he was still Rae. But he was turned on, the way a chick got turned on, his nipples hard and tight under the sheet, his belly tingling, wetness between his legs.

Interesting.

The distraction was enough that he skipped the freakout he probably should be having and went straight to the investigation. Maybe that made sense, too, because he'd been himself in his dreams all night, so he was kind of, he didn't know, maybe normalized again, at least in the brain plate. So now he could deal a little better with this weird, dreamlike thing where he woke up in Rae's form.

And this was interesting.

He turned over and pushed the sheet down. Yeah, his nipples were all perked up and happy, just like his cock would've been when he woke up in his own body, although probably for a different reason. Ray wasn't that good with mornings, even if his cock liked them okay. The rest of him preferred a good wallow and a couple cups of coffee before he had to do anything strenuous, and that included sex.

Huh. He wondered whether waking up horny was normal for Rae. She wasn't a morning person any more than Ray was, he would bet on it. And just going by Stella—not a morning person either, by any stretch—he didn't think women usually woke up horny. Although...he looked again at the indentation next to him. Oh, yeah. It was _right_ next to him. No space in between. Fraser'd been _holding him_ in his sleep.

Explanation enough.

He wished he'd woken up in time to enjoy it.

Well, if Fraser wasn't going to finish what he'd started, Ray could probably figure something out. He knew how to make a girl's body feel good, after all. He put his hand on his belly, slid it down between his legs, and, yeah, that felt good. He spread his fingers over his mound: good. Wow. Everything down there felt great, especially if he touched it real light, not as firm as he would've touched his own body. He stroked both hands over his belly and thighs experimentally for a minute, then put one hand up to his breasts and explored first one, then the other, stroking softly, circling the nipples, then pinching them very gently, which that almost made him buck up off the bed. God, his nipples were so sensitive. It was like they had a direct connection, a line of electricity, to the center of him, to the place where he got all hot and wet and throbbing and wanting.

He squirmed a little on the bed and moved his hand between his legs again. But, yeah, right _there—_his clit, had to be—that wanted more attention, so he stroked it, and whoa, yeah, he had to be really, really gentle there; it was incredibly sensitive and didn't want much pressure at all. He moved his fingers over and around it, and it was kind of like touching the sweet spot on his cock, except the area of intense pleasure was shaped totally differently, swelling softer and growing very slick and slippery under his fingers. And the slick-and-slipperiness made it feel three times as good, like lube on his cock.

He curled up, half propping himself up against the headboard, trying to see what he was doing. He couldn't really see the parts that felt so good, but he could see his hand moving between his legs, and the sight was hot enough on its own. He stiffened his middle finger and aimed it down further through the slickness, and just like that, it was inside him.

Soft. He hadn't remembered just how soft it felt inside a woman. Well, actually, he did remember a little, but it was more like a memory of a memory. He hadn't been with a woman in over a year, and it'd been Stella, and the end of that last date with her, if he could call it that, had hurt so bad that it had made his brain shy away from remembering details, like the incredible softness inside her.

He was remembering that now, but his old pain was distant, and this new experience, this pleasure, actually feeling what a woman felt from the inside—this was present, here, and immediate. And damn, it was good, even though it was so different from anything he was used to. He pushed a second finger into himself, alongside the first, and felt his internal muscles tighten around them, which was all kinds of cool.

There was a gasp from the doorway. A quick, nervous cough. Ray looked up. Fraser was standing there holding a steaming mug and looking really flustered.

"I, er...I. Yes. Coffee." Fraser set the mug down on the bedside table and did a smart about-face, making like he was going to scram out of the room as fast as he could.

"Fraser."

"Ray, I don't think..."

"Yeah, you're not thinking. That much is obvious."

"I'm sorry, I...didn't mean to interrupt...well, I didn't know you'd be..."

"Just finding out what some things feel like, Fraser. I gotta say, it's pretty interesting." Understatement of the millennium, of course, but there was no point in making a big deal of it now. Fraser looked freaked out enough already.

"Would you like some breakfast before you go up to the club for your rehearsal with Maddy?" Fraser said stiffly, his back still turned.

Ray still had his fingers deep inside him, and Fraser was talking about breakfast. "Fraser—jeez."

"You have about an hour," Fraser said. His back was really damn straight, even though he wasn't even wearing his uniform; he had a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt on.

"You could give me a hand here," Ray said, real quietly. "Or, uh...some other part. You know, if you wanted to help a guy out."

Fraser flinched. Didn't turn. "Ray." He sounded like his jaw was clenched tight. "Don't torture me."

"Torture _you?"_ Ray sighed, lying back on the bed. He let his fingers slip out of him and wiped them on the sheet. "Not trying to hurt you, Fraser. I'm just playing the cards I been dealt. As for this..." he gestured. "Me waking up all hot and bothered, that is actually your doing, Fraser."

That made Fraser turn around, finally, but he kept his eyes on Ray's face, clearly putting some effort into not looking anywhere else. "How so?" he said in a real guarded tone.

Ray patted the indentation in the bed next to him.

Fraser blushed. "I'm accustomed to...well. You insisted I sleep here; it isn't as though I could tell in my sleep that you aren't..."

"Hey, I'm not complaining, just explaining. I don't mind. I liked it yesterday morning, remember?"

Fraser looked like he was trying real hard _not_ to remember.

"Look..." Ray softened his voice. "You gotta cut me some slack here, buddy. I'm not some strange guy touching your wife, you know. At the moment, I _am_ your wife, which, wow, that's a line I never thought I'd hear myself say."

"Ray—"

"Yeah?"

"Ah...er...nothing." Fraser started to turn away again.

"That might work on someone who hasn't been your partner for a year and a half, but not me. Spill."

"Ray, I...it...you. Er." Fraser raised his hand, then let it drop at his side. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't...I do sympathize with your predicament."

"Yeah, well. I see where you're coming from, too. I get it, it weirds you out that another guy, even the male her, is touching your wife."

"Silly of me. A ridiculous concern, actually, considering you are inhabiting her body at the moment, and she's not...she's not...home."

"Yeah. But I get it, I overstand your position. I feel that way every time my ex-wife dates somebody and my mom tells me about it. Freaks me the hell out, and I been divorced from her for two years."

Fraser swallowed kind of hard. "I realize you're respectful of Rae's body; you'd have to be. It just disturbs me to think of anyone, even her counterpart, er, experimenting with her body while she's...elsewhere."

"I don't think it'll freak her out, Fraser." Ray shrugged. "Besides, she's experimenting with mine."

Fraser jerked his head up. "How do you—you can't know that."

"I know my body. C'mon, Fraser, you're a guy, you know what I'm talking about. She ain't gonna get through a week in my body without, you know...at least jerking off once or twice. C'mon, you _know _that."

"All right," Fraser said, and he lowered his head so Ray couldn't see his face and rubbed the hell out of his eyebrow.

Ray watched him curiously. "Rae know you do it, too?" he asked.

Fraser turned scarlet. "Ray!"

Ray tried not to roll his eyes too obviously. "Jeez, Fraser. All right, let me tell you something. Of course she knows. One, she's a detective, and B, she wasn't born yesterday."

"She's, well, I don't discuss such things with..."

"If you think you're sparing her feelings or something, I gotta clue you in, buddy. She knows, and she don't mind."

Fraser wasn't looking at him. Fraser seemed to be trying to inspect the floor for microscopic dust bunnies or something, which there really weren't any, because Fraser lived here. Dust bunnies probably ran for their lives.

"Why would she mind?" Ray persisted. "It's your body, you gotta take care of it yourself sometimes. Hell, she's probably glad you're not on her day and night."

Fraser looked up, with a frown, almost like what Ray said had hurt him.

Ray slid over on the bed to where he could see Fraser's eyes more clearly. "You never lived with a woman before her, did you?"

"No."

"Yeah, I thought not. You guys are still in the honeymoon phase. Me, I was married for fifteen years. Stella and me were good together...even sometimes after the divorce, which, yeah, I know. Screwy, but she was down with it, and me, I was always trying to win her back. Anyway, there's times when a woman just don't feel like her husband crawling all over her, and..."

Fraser cleared his throat a couple of times. "All right, I take your point. Thank you for the, er, advice."

"—and there's times when she really wants it," Ray finished. "If you catch my drift."

Fraser didn't answer that for a minute, and he still didn't meet Ray's eyes. "You're not Rae," he said finally.

"Yeah. I know. At the moment, that fact does not give me any great satisfaction."

"I apologize for the intrusion," Fraser said stiffly. "I'll, er...be in the kitchen."

Ray huffed a little sharp laugh. "Never mind. You kind of killed the mood, anyway."

"I'm sorry." Which Ray was pretty sure he wasn't, but it was nice of Fraser to at least make the effort.

"You and me both, buddy." Ray pushed himself up off the bed reluctantly and went to get showered and dressed, but not before he'd punched the pillow a few times. Damn.

  
Dropping Fraser at the Consulate and driving up to _Dino's Girls_ on his own actually felt like a relief.

Maddy smiled at Ray when he came in. She still looked kind of pale, but at least her eyes weren't puffy and red like she'd spent the day crying. He handed her the Eurythmics CD and she lit right up. "Oh, I remember this song. Great number. You could do a lot with this, honey."

"Used to dance to it in the clubs, back in the day," Ray said. "Uh, and I thought I could work with the Annie Lennox look, you know."

"Drag king? Yeah, I like that. It'd be kind of different. Like _Victor, Victoria_ in reverse. Neat idea."

So they worked out a routine for Ray to dance to, and Maddy taught him to lip-synch, which turned out not to be all that difficult. She declared Ray a natural, and told him she'd slotted him into the show for the following weekend.

  
Ray got through his first week as Rae on caffeine, sugar, and a huge dose of denial. It was the undercover assignment of a lifetime, he told himself every morning, when he woke up in the wrong body next to the wrong guy (who looked a lot like the right guy, except how the right guy wasn't actually sleeping with Ray) and put on the wrong clothes for him, which were the right clothes for Rae (but still no bra, because he had _limits,_ thank you very much), and went through the motions of being the woman he might've been.

He went up to _Dino's_ every morning for a week and rehearsed with Maddy, letting her put him through whatever gyrations she thought would look most convincing, and learning how to use the new body on the dance floor.

Fraser came up to the club to watch about half of the rehearsals, and he went with Ray to rent a guy-style suit that would fit Rae's body. Ray went with a funked-up 30s Chicago gangster-type suit, so if the shoulder holster showed it would just look like part of the costume.

Privately, Ray figured he and Fraser might be able to get the goods on Dino before Ray ever actually had to do the show, and rehearsing up at the club every day was the perfect excuse to hang around, relieving him of having to find a reasonable-sounding explanation for being there every day. On breaks from the dancing he sniffed around Dino's office and rechecked the murder scene—well, what he thought was probably the murder scene, the apartment, which the crime scene guys had finished with and released for the girls' use again. He didn't find anything useful, but got the place mapped out in his head so well he could have drawn a picture of it in his sleep.

Dino himself was pretty much never in, and Ray wondered whether that meant he realized Ray was there trying to find evidence to bust him. They'd told Dino that Ray was there to protect the dancers, and since Fraser'd been the one to tell him, in his real sincere _I am a Mountie_ voice, Ray figured there was a good chance Dino had swallowed that explanation and was staying away for another reason.

Maddy said only that Dino wasn't always around in the mornings, but he'd be there for all the weekend shows, and sure enough, when Ray and Fraser went to watch the shows the first weekend, Dino was there, though at a table by himself, distant and aloof, his pudgy face kind of solemn. He wore about six or seven rings on his fingers, and a designer shirt so ugly it would have given the real Ray Vecchio a run for his money, even in his most Armani Got Attacked By Barney the Dinosaur phase. In that getup, Dino should have looked flashy and obvious, but he really didn't. Instead, he looked sad, like maybe he'd cared about the girls who'd died.

And Ray kind of bought some of that, but if the guy was feeling remorse, that was not Ray's problem. From the day he'd met Dino, his gut had been telling him the same thing Rae's had told her: Dino did it, and Ray and Fraser just had to figure out how to prove that in a court of law.

In the meantime, Ray had to nail down a convincing-looking dance routine.

Usually when he first got there in the morning, he felt stupid as all fuck, but a few minutes into the warmups, and he was just Ray, dancing, losing himself in the music, and it was actually okay. Dancing he could do, even in the different body. In fact, the more he danced, the easier it got to do everything else—walk through the station, draw his gun, everything. He'd even gone to the police range and managed to keep Rae's marksmanship rating intact.

Friday morning, though, he felt like he had two left feet, and he was supposed to do the routine in the shoes he was going to wear for the performance. Fraser had showed him where Rae kept her shoes, and they were mostly flats, sandals and stuff, and he tried to sell Maddy on the idea that a pair of low-heeled shoes would work, but she just rolled her eyes at him and said it would ruin the line of her trousers, and she loaned him a pair of ankle boots with three-inch heels.

It was like dancing on stilts. Ray narrowly missed turning his ankle half a dozen times.

Then there was the problem that he apparently didn't know how to move Rae's hips convincingly. She was slim-hipped for a woman, but she still had lots more hip than Ray's male body did, and Ray apparently walked like a guy, according to Maddy, even with the week's practice. "This is R&amp;B, Ray, this is soulful music, and your shtick here is that you're a girl playing a guy playing a girl. In drag."

That remark threatened to make Ray's head spin, so he shook himself a couple of times and refused to think about it.

"Look," Maddy persisted, apparently not noticing that Ray was thirty seconds from puking from the motion sickness, "you gotta grind it like a real girl, here. A sexy girl."

Yep, Ray'd officially reached his limit on the weird. He made the time-out sign at her. "Sit. I gotta...sit for a minute."

"Okay." She slinked over to the lip of the stage and hopped off it, then held out a hand to help Ray down.

Déjà weird all over again for Ray, because, a girl giving him a hand down was just so queer. But, he was a girl here, as he had to keep reminding himself. Maybe girls did that kind of thing for other girls. He'd never really noticed.

Or maybe Maddy had noticed Ray looked kind of green from tottering around on the funky high-heeled boots, and she was taking pity on him.

Either way, Maddy was bigger than Ray, and her action was _polite, _that was for sure. Ray wasn't going to throw that back in her face. So he took her hand and let her help him down and didn't make a big deal out of it.

The other dancer, Angelique, came out from the kitchen with bottles of water for Ray and Maddy, and he thanked her like she'd handed him a winning lottery ticket. She was a thin girl with long, long red hair and an uncertain look on her face pretty much all the time except when she was dancing, but she smiled at that, like Ray'd charmed her a little.

Cool. Apparently he still had a way with women even though he now was one.

On the other hand, he was so exhausted he practically had to lay his head on the table, so maybe Angelique was just taking pity on him.

When he had the water bottle half-emptied he started feeling better, and he sat back in the chair and yawned. There was something he'd been itching to ask Maddy.

"Which do you want to be?"

"Come again?"

"You know. Man or woman. Which do you want to be?" It was suddenly very important for Ray to know.

"Oh. 'Cause I kind of get to choose, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Well, of course I thought about it a lot in the past, but now I've mostly come to terms with being what I am. I think this—" She gestured at her dress, her hair. "This pretty much is how I feel inside. Like a girl, just not a typical girl. You know?"

"Yeah, I know." He sighed.

"You're not there yet," Maddy said.

Ray's head whipped around so fast he thought he felt his brains slosh around. "_What?"_

"You haven't come to acceptance yet."

"I don't know what you're getting at."

She shrugged elegantly. "I realize I've only known you a week, but you've got this...vibe about you. Like you might be one of us."

"I'm not," Ray said. "This body is a normal female-type body."

"See," she said, tapping a long, red fingernail against her cheek, then pointing it at him. "The way you put that, that's really odd."

Which Ray realized that about half a second after the words were out of his mouth. He was talking like his body—Rae's body—was a car or something, just a vehicle that he could get in and out of.

"You're not comfortable in your skin," Maddy said. "You haven't made peace with being a woman."

She was, like, spooky or something. "How...how do you..." Ray gestured, because the words just wouldn't come out right.

Maddy shrugged, an elegant, fluid, feminine gesture. "For one thing, I know dancers. You're good, but today you're moving like somebody who doesn't trust her body.

"I've met enough people with gender confusion to spot the signs. There's guys—and girls—who cross-dress and it's just a fun thing for them, a kink, but underneath they're okay with being what they are. So if they don't walk the part, it's okay, it's just fun, and they don't sweat it.

"Then there's people who feel like they've got a double personality, and when they cross-dress it's the other half expressing itself, and they feel complete, and they're good with that. And then there's people like me who just never felt right, never felt like we were what everyone said we were."

"I don't fit in any of those categories."

"I didn't list them all yet, but, yeah, you've got a different vibe. There's tranny people who change and some who don't, and there's...I dunno, the vibe I get from you is really different. I don't think I've felt this exact vibe before."

"So you do that, you get...vibes? Off of people, maybe situations? Gut instincts?"

"Yeah," Maddy said. "Don't you?"

"Yeah, I guess. I mean, you know, for a detective it comes in handy."

"I'll bet."

"So what vibe you getting off me?"

She squinted at him for a minute. "I don't know...It's almost like you're really aware of how temporary it all is."

"God, I hope so," Ray breathed. Then he caught himself. "Uh, what I mean is..."

"It's okay, honey," she said. She let out a hollow little laugh. "If anybody understands, I sure do." She looked at him a little closer. "You're okay with the charade, though, right?"

"What do you mean? Doing the act, hanging around here for the case?"

"No, I mean the charade in your everyday life. You must feel like you're working undercover all the time."

That got his attention. He gulped some water. "Yeah, maybe," he finally choked out. "Wow, you, uh, you really do get vibes, don't you?"

"Sure." She shrugged like it was no big deal. "I read cards, and stuff. You want me to do yours?"

A long shiver snaked up Ray's back. This was important. He didn't know how he knew. But his body—well the body he was in, anyway—was telling him as sure as his own would have: _this is important. This is fucking _germane. _Do this._

So he swallowed hard and said, "Yeah. Yeah, I want you to. Vibe me out, tell me what's...how I can..." he stopped. _Tell me how I can get back to my own universe,_ he'd wanted to say, but he couldn't say that. She might be for real with the woo-woo psychic stuff or she might not, but either way, he couldn't exactly come out and tell her who he really was.

He didn't trust anybody with that information except Fraser. Anybody else would probably try to have him committed.

"You look wiped," Maddy said. "You sleep okay last night?"

"Not so good," Ray admitted, though he was sure as hell not going to spill about why. But with Fraser hugging the edge of the bed all night, tight with tension, like he was tying himself up in knots to avoid holding Ray in his sleep again, neither one of them was exactly getting quality rest.  
      
 "Tell you what," Maddy said. "You want to take a longer break and do the reading now?"

"Yeah, that'd be good," Ray said, and the shivery feeling went up his spine again.

So Maddy went into the dressing room and came out with her cards, carefully wrapped in what looked like a black silk pocket square, and she hauled Ray over to a table in the far corner where they wouldn't be disturbed.

She spread the silk handkerchief out on the table, fiddled around with the cards for a bit, shuffling and rearranging them, and then pushed them over to Ray and asked him to cut the deck.

He shrugged and did it, watching her uncertainly.

"Never had your cards read before?"

"Nope."

"Well, relax," she said. "Won't hurt a bit."

She dealt a bunch of cards and laid about a dozen of them out on the cloth in a weird pattern. They weren't ordinary playing cards, but the fortune-telling kind. Ray'd seen them in movies, but he'd never taken a good look at any in person. A few had elaborate pictures and titles: The Magician, The Lovers, The Fool. Yeah, those were his cards, all right. There were also a lot of numbered ones, most with chalices or pictures of sticks with leaves or flowers wrapped around them. Weird.

Maddy looked at the cards thoughtfully, looked up at Ray, looked back at the cards. Her eyes seemed kind of unfocused when she looked at Ray, but Maddy looked at him like that a lot, and he figured it was just her way. Like she preferred to see who a person really was instead of just what they looked like on the outside. Ray was all for that approach, as long as it didn't blow his cover.

Maddy was silent a long time. Ray squirmed and fidgeted for what felt like an hour, then he finally blurted: "So? You get anything?"

"Oh, yeah," she said. "I get a lot of stuff, but it's kind of confusing."

"Story of my life," Ray said, with a stupid, snorty laugh (which, he had to admit, did not sound half so stupid in Rae's voice).

"It _is_ the story of your life," Maddy said, real seriously. "Okay, so what I'm seeing is that you're not who you appear to be."

"Of course not. I'm undercover," he whispered.

She smirked. "I know that. What I mean is, there's this mismatch between your body and who you are inside. Each of us has an inner persona that's the opposite sex of who we are on the outside. Like males have an inner female and women have an inner male persona. But in your case, it's like your inner persona is what's on the outside. Like you've switched. That make any sense to you, or am I crazy?"

"No, no—it makes a lot of sense," Ray said, leaning forward. "Wow."

"Okay," Maddy said, relaxing a little in her chair. "That's good. I don't really need to know any specifics here. As long as this makes sense to you, I'll keep going. It's information for you, you know, not for me."

"Keep going, yeah."

"Okay, so this situation, the way it is, it's not permanent."

"Thank God." He breathed out, a long sigh. He had never expected it would be permanent, but he really hadn't let himself even think that, because a freakout would have been a sure thing, maybe a freakout that never stopped, and then he would've been in the loony bin no matter how hard Fraser tried to keep him out of it. Fraser would've had to abduct him to Canada or something...

He smacked his own head to banish that line of thought. "Yeah, so, good. I'm relieved."

"I know it's a strain," Maddy said. "To feel like you can't be the real you. Don't I know it."

"Yeah," Ray breathed. "Bit of a strain. How long is it gonna be?" He practically leaned over the table, waiting for her answer.

"Looks like a lunar month."

"A _month?"_

"A month, yeah. From the full moon to the full moon."

It had been nine days. "When's the next full moon?"

"Huh. I think about three weeks, give or take."

"Jesus! That long?" Twenty-one more days of being a chick? Ray sat back, stunned.

"A month's not _that_ long, in the grand scheme of things, is it?"

"Oh. No, I guess not. It's just...it's been a little rough lately." She had no idea, of course.

"I'm sorry, honey. This isn't exact. It's the best I can see."

"But you're sure it's not permanent."

"As sure as I can be. Everything's temporary, remember?"

"So do I just have to wait out the month?" Ray asked. "Or is there something I gotta do to make it happen?"

"What I'm seeing is that you have an inner journey to make. It's like your other persona, your...well, this is going to sound weird, but...you sure you're not like me?"

"Like you how?"

"XY. You know."

"I don't think so," Ray said. "Why do you ask?"

"I keep seeing you as the male persona, and the female one is your counterpart, your _anima_. You get that?"

"Oh, yeah. I get that perfectly. You're right."

"It looks to me like it's your female persona who has to make the outer journey. I think there's some kind of mystery for her to solve."

"Well there's one for me to solve, too," Ray said. "The murders."

"That's true. But, see, with the cards, they can talk about outer circumstances, but often they're even more concerned with inner truths. From what I'm seeing, when your inner female counterpart solves her mystery, she'll be back where she belongs, and you will, too."

"You're saying I just gotta wait for her to do it all?" Ray wasn't really that good at waiting.

"Well, you could, but you have goals, too. There's some knowledge or understanding you're supposed to gain, usually. That's your inner journey."

"Huh. So do the cards say what my 'inner journey' is, what I gotta do?"

She looked the cards over. Put her hand down on the one that said The Fool, and tapped it, frowning. Then her face cleared. "Trust is called for, Ray. Trust. This is gonna sound weird, but I see you jumping off a pier into Lake Michigan. I don't mean suicide or anything like that."

He was already laughing. "Oh, it's weird all right, but it's 100% accurate. I do it all the time."

"You swim a lot?"

"I don't even know how. But I still seem to end up in the lake a lot with my screwball partner. He seems to think the shortest path between crime and justice leads through large bodies of water."

"Freaky."

"You're telling me."

"Okay, well at least I'm not totally off the wall, here."

"You're right on target," Ray said. "So you're saying I gotta trust."

"It's your big issue, isn't it? Trusting people. Being trusted."

"Yeah." He sobered. "That it is." One of them, anyway.

"You've got to be trustworthy, which you clearly are, and you've got to trust others. You've got to trust your inner female."

"I do. I got no choice."

"You've passed the spiritual initiation of trust. You know how to make the leap of blind faith; you've kind of mastered that thanks to your male counterpart."

"I get that." Especially the male counterpart in the red suit.

"So what's my inner journey?"

"Acceptance of self."

It was pretty much the last thing Ray'd expected to hear. "Come again?"

"See, you're good with trusting your counterparts, your..."

"Partner," Ray said. "I'm good at trusting my partner."

"Yeah, you know all about partnership. What you don't trust or accept is yourself."

"I don't?"

"Well, no. Remember how I said you didn't seem at home in your own skin?"

"Oh. Yeah, I hear you. So how do I learn to accept myself?"

"I think you're meant to figure that out on your own, Detective."

Ray managed a weak smile. "That's all you got for me?"

"That's all I've got, Rae," she said soothingly. "But it's really a lot, don't you think?"

Huh. She had a point. He could feel that shiver climbing his spine again. "Yeah. You were right on target." He paused. "Maddy, you ever think you could maybe do this, read cards for people, maybe even do some of the other stuff psychics do, like maybe assist the PD, instead of...perform here?"

"Turn tricks, you mean."

"Yeah."

"I don't see that many clients," she said. "And the money's great. But I've been saving up. I'm thinking of stopping, if that's what you're asking. It's just that I like singing here."

"Yeah, but with the murders..."

"I'm nervous," she said. "But I took your advice and I'm not having any dates this week. I told Dino my stomach was bothering me. I don't know how long that excuse is gonna hold out, but I had to think of something on the spot. It's not like I can claim I got my period."

"There's lots of other jobs you could do," Ray said.

"Yeah, I know. This is just...it's my way of being true to who I am. Everybody's got to find their own way."

"But if you could just sing and not do...the other stuff..."

"Yeah, I think about it," she said, her voice suddenly sounding a little tired. "But, look, I choose my own dates. I don't have to go with anybody I don't want to be with, not any more. It's even...you know, sometimes it's kind of nice, even."

"Turning tricks?" He couldn't keep the harsh sound out of his voice, but it was total disbelief, not anger.

"Yeah, I know it's probably hard to believe, but, yeah. Because the guys I go with know what they're getting. They want me the way I am. I don't have to explain."

"So this is, like, being true to yourself?"

"Exactly. It's something I can do and be myself."

Ray got that. He didn't see, yet, how he wasn't being true to himself in his own life, but it was worth trying to figure out. He yawned. "Thanks for the reading, Maddy."

"Sure, anytime."

He stood up and stretched. "You think we could scare up some coffee before we go through the routine again?"

"Oh, yeah, there's got to be a pot on in the kitchen." She picked up the cards and shuffled them as she spoke, then wrapped them up carefully in the silk. "Come on."

She took him into the kitchen, where they found the coffeemaker still hot. The coffee'd been on a while, but once Ray poured some and put sugar in it, he found it wasn't as bad as the station's coffee, so that counted as a win. He sipped his and watched Maddy daintily pouring a little bit of milk into hers and stirring it very precisely, kind of the way she did everything.

Her movements triggered a question. He didn't know what connection it could have to the murders, but he had a hunch it was relevant. "Say, Maddy, you ever read the cards for anybody else around here?"

"Oh, sure. Everybody, at one time or another."

"Even the girls who...the victims?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I don't know, I was just wondering if you saw...like if you could have known...?"

"You're wondering if I saw they were going to die."

"Yeah." He waved the question away. "Sorry, it was stupid."

"It's not stupid. The answer is no, though. I didn't know. Anyway, it's not the kind of thing you'd usually see in the cards."

"It isn't? Isn't that why people want readings?"

"What, to know if something bad's about to happen? No. People don't usually ask that kind of question, and I don't think my answers would be all that helpful. Most of the time they want to know how to find Mr. Right. Or Ms. Right, depending. Or they already think they met their soulmate, and they want to know how to convince the other person. Or how to keep them."

"Can you help with that kind of thing?"

"Sometimes." She sighed, sipping her coffee. "Usually if they think they've met their soulmate, but the other person doesn't think so, then they haven't."

Frannie Vecchio, case in point, he thought.

And then he thought: Stella Kowalski, case in point, and felt an echo of the old pain. "I know what you mean," he told Maddy.

"Sure, honey, we've all been there."

"What if you've met your soulmate and you're with your soulmate, but you're just friends, 'cause he's not... he's not..." _He's not gay, _Ray didn't say, because how much sense would that make to her?

"You mean he just wants to stay friends?"

"Uh, yeah. Or what if your soulmate was a woman, and she really loved you, but she wasn't, you know. Gay."

Maddy was squinting at him like she was confused. "You're in love with a woman?"

"Oh, no, no, not me," he said. "I'm married; I'm, uh, talking about someone else."

"Like your inner female?" She squinted at him through her big dark eyelashes.

He shrugged. "Or like a friend. Like, say, an old roommate that I still care about, and she's alone, and...I'm worried about her." Yeah, right. Like Stella would ever. Even in this universe she was probably straight as a stop sign. But it was as good a cover as any.

"Ah, well...I don't know, Rae. Sometimes a person's soulmate isn't available right away. Sometimes a divorce has to happen, or a relocation. Life's complex."

"It sure is." It was a lot more complex than Ray had realized a week ago.

"I think it's a journey," Maddy said. "Nothing's ever really done or finished. So...you don't give up. Don't give up on yourself. Don't give up on the people you love."

And maybe that was an answer: Don't give up on Fraser. Maybe it meant Ray shouldn't give up on either version of Fraser.

He didn't need fancy cards to tell him that. He didn't have it in him to give up on Fraser; he'd found that out on the lake-pirate case.

Maddy sighed. "You want to go over the routine one more time? I'm sure you have other stuff to do today, and you'll want to rest tomorrow before the show. Your big debut's set for eight o'clock."

"Yeah, one more time," Ray said. He looked at his wrist—oh, yeah, no watch. Fraser'd said Rae did wear one, but hadn't been able to find it since Tuesday. So he looked around the kitchen for a clock. Bingo: eleven-thirty. Plenty of time. "Fraser's coming up on his lunch hour."

Maddy smiled. "Good, you want to show him the routine?"

Jeez. Ray was going to feel put on the spot enough in front of a full audience. "Uh, no. I'll surprise him tomorrow night."

"Okay. Let's get to it."

 


	7. More Questions

Ray did a lot better after the long break, dancing through the entire song twice in full costume without making any mistakes or falling on his face or spraining anything. Maddy clapped wildly and pronounced him ready to take his turn in the spotlight.

It was kind of weird changing in the dressing room with Maddy, but Ray was getting good at avoiding looking at himself in the mirror—not looking cut down on the freakouts considerably—so he avoided looking at Maddy the same way, keeping his eyes focused on totally uninteresting stuff like the room's décor.

The dressing room was big enough to fit a lot of performers. One wall was dominated by a huge clothing rack with all sorts of glittery, feathery, girl stuff on it, and at the very end of the wall was a small, weirdly shaped sofa that Maddy laughingly called a "fainting couch." ("It's for when I have a really tough night out there," she told Ray. "Also it's a good place to sit to put on shoes.") There was a long counter along the other three walls, with enough chairs tucked under it for ten people. Above the counters, the walls were mirrored, and a strip of vanity lights ran along the tops of the mirrors the whole way. There was a shallow shelf above that, which had hat boxes and shoe boxes and stuff like that stowed on it.

The shelf at the far end was a little neater, just a plastic vase of fake flowers and a couple of metal vases with no flowers up there, and nothing else. Maybe stage props or decorations, but kind of ugly ones, he thought. Then again, Ray was _not_ into interior decorating, so what did he know? At least they didn't look like they were going to fall and clunk anybody in the head.

By the time Fraser showed, Ray had gotten out of the costume, washed up, and set up everything he'd need in the dressing room for the following night.

Then he and Fraser cleared out and found a booth at Bruno's diner, not far from the station. Over lunch, Ray told Fraser about Maddy reading his cards, trying to remember everything she'd said. Fraser listened and said "Hm" a lot.

"I know it sounds screwy," Ray said. "At the time, though, it seemed pretty amazing. Like she could see right into me. You buy any of that?"

"It's very convincing," Fraser said. "And I knew a shaman up north who had similar abilities. He claimed it was something virtually anyone could learn to do, though most people never bothered."

"Huh. Well, Welsh don't like to admit it, but once in a blue moon he calls in a member of the woo-woo brigade to help solve a case."

"Really? Rae's never mentioned it," Fraser said.

Ray snickered. "Well, I never have to do it, because I got you. You, uh, taste things. Almost like being psychic."

"You may have a point." Fraser folded his napkin into a triangle, then a square, then a smaller triangle, then a smaller square.

"What're you doing, that combinatorics thingy?"

"Origami," Fraser said. He folded one flap of the square down into another triangle. "Is that all Maddy said? That you just have to wait for Rae to solve the problem?"

"Yeah, except for the 'inner journey' stuff. I still don't have a handle on that."

He looked at his wrist. Still bare. "Say, Fraser. You don't have any idea where Rae's watch got to, do you? I'm going nuts without one."

Fraser slipped his own watch off his wrist. "Wear mine."

Ray couldn't help grinning. "Really?"

"Certainly. I wear it mostly for sentimental reasons. It was my father's."

"Don't tell me—you never look at it, 'cause you tell time by the sun."

"Well..."

"That's it, isn't it?"

"You just said not to tell you."

"It's an expression, Fraser!"

"Oh. Well, yes, you're correct."

"Freak," Ray said affectionately, strapping the watch on. It was loose on Rae's wrist, but he didn't care.

Fraser smiled. "Do you call him that?"

"Him who?"

"Your Benton Fraser."

"Sure do. 'Cause he is one. And so are you. But I'll tell you a secret."

Fraser leaned forward, so close that his hair brushed against Ray's lips. Closer, Ray thought, than his Fraser should lean toward him in a crowded public place. But here, anyone who saw them would see only Fraser and Rae, a straight married couple, trying to have a private word over lunch.

Ray let his lips touch Fraser's ear as he whispered into it. "Just between you and me? I'm a freak, too."

Fraser leaned back and smiled. "Ah. Thank you, Ray."

Ray got up and pulled some bills out of Rae's wallet to pay the check, and after he laid the money on the table, Fraser set a perfect little origami Stetson down on top of it.

Ray shook his head, laughing. Then Fraser actually _took his hand_ and led him out of the diner—which, wow, how great was that? And he realized, with a little shock of amusement, that despite all the difficulties of being here, being Rae, he actually was getting something he'd wished for, something he couldn't have at home in his own body, even if Fraser somehow turned out to be totally good with the idea of being with Ray.

Ray knew his own Fraser didn't have a big problem with holding Ray's hand, fire escape or no, but he wouldn't have put Ray's career and reputation at risk by walking down the street a block from the 27th like this. Ray sure as hell wouldn't have risked it, either.

But here and now, as Rae, Ray could have this. It kind of put things in perspective. He'd had _sex_ with Fraser even if he hadn't, as Fraser put it, actually been penetrated. He'd kissed Fraser, and Fraser had kissed him. And those things could _maybe_ happen at home if he could talk Fraser into them.

But he wouldn't be able to walk down this Chicago street holding Fraser's hand, not and keep his cred with the PD, not this century.

Getting to do it here and now was a gift, that's what it was. It turned Ray's crank like nothing doing. He practically danced all the way back to the station, and he held Fraser's hand the entire way, right up until he had to push the station door open.

As he let go, he caught Fraser's eye, and Fraser smiled at him, like Ray's happiness was contagious.

Which maybe it was. Maybe, he thought, Rae would be able to feel it too. He hoped so.

  
Saturday afternoon, Ray and Fraser both went in to _Dino's Girls,_ supposedly to make sure everything was ready for the evening's performance and to help Ray get over his jitters. Really, though, they wanted a chance to go through Dino's office without being disturbed, and one time that Dino never came in to the club was Saturday afternoon. Apparently he needed to rest for the evening shows as much as the performers did.

That worked for Ray, especially since no one was in except for the kitchen staff, busy preparing appetizers and other goodies for the evening crowd. Dief proved to be an expert diversion, hanging around just outside the kitchen door and begging the cooks piteously for handouts. Ray laughed as Fraser told Dief to assume his cover and alert them if anyone should venture near Dino's office.

That left Ray and Fraser free to snoop, and since the warrant they had for the premises covered any snooping they thought justifiable—no surprise, on the trail of a suspected serial murderer, with the last victim found just upstairs—they were good.

Ray figured Dief would probably give them a good fifteen or twenty minutes, so they headed into the little office and started tearing the place apart as surreptitiously as they could. Ray couldn't pronounce "surreptitious" but he could do it, pulling on a pair of latex gloves and lifting papers by the edge, checking them out quickly and then letting them settle back in place, light as a feather.

Fraser used gloves, too, but Ray didn't know why he bothered, seeing as he was also sniffing and tasting stuff, so if there was any kind of hinky poison in there somewhere, Fraser was taking a risk. But when didn't he, really?

Ray was looking at ledgers and receipts. He hadn't figured pudgy, aloof little Dino as a computer kind of guy, even thought that was the stereotype, right? Maybe it was all the rings on his fingers. Typing would have been hell.

Anyway, Ray's hunch was right on target: everything was on paper. At first, Ray only found the typical stuff you'd find in the office of a restaurant or nightclub that wasn't up to anything illegal except for the usual tax-evasion-type things, and, really, Ray figured that was the IRS's lookout. He had a murderer to catch, and no head for numbers, anyway. Besides, the murder rap would probably trigger an audit, if they got that far.

"Hm." Fraser was sniffing at something in the hutch over Dino's desk chair.

"Find anything?" Ray whispered.

"He's paying the bouncer under the table," Fraser said.

"I know that. I mean anything related to the murders."

"No. Except...oh, my goodness."

Ray turned. Fraser was holding something up. Ray moved close enough to see it clearly. It was a watch, not one he recognized. He looked at Fraser for an explanation.

"It's Rae's watch," Fraser said. He turned it over. "Look at the inscription."

Ray looked. _No ship like partnership. Love, Ben_ it said.

"Aw, that's nice, Fraser." He couldn't help grinning.

Fraser smiled, too. "I'm glad we found it."

"Yeah. But how the hell did it get here? I sure didn't put it here. I've never seen it before."

"I know. Rae lost it last Tuesday."

"Last Tuesday. Oh...you mean before I was here."

"Right."

"So she was in here?"

"I don't know. I wasn't with her that day."

"Where'd you find the watch?"

"In the hutch, here." Fraser pointed out a deep shelf that was otherwise full of papers.

Ray put his arm up and tried to imagine how Rae could have squeezed her hand in there.

"She'd have noticed if her watch fell off when she was reaching in there," Ray said.

"I think so, too," Fraser said.

"Somebody else put this here."

"It seems likely."

"Huh." Ray fished an evidence bag out of his pocket and put the watch in, sealed the bag and tagged it. "Guess we should check it for prints. Might not mean anything, though, since two of the murders happened before this watch got here."

"But it is odd," Fraser said. "I certainly think Rae would have noticed."

"Maybe she did," Ray said. "Maybe she noticed, remembered where it had to be, and figured she'd come up here and look for it on Thursday, only she never got the chance, because she..."

"Yes," Fraser said, looking at the floor suddenly and scrubbing his thumb real hard over his eyebrow. He pulled his ear, looked out the door of the office.

"I'm—I'm sorry, buddy," Ray said. "I don't know why I can't learn to think first before opening my mouth."

"It's not your fault, Ray."

"Yeah, well, when I find out whose fault it is, I'm gonna kick some heads."

Fraser looked up then. He seemed like he was attempting a smile. It didn't really work, but Ray gave him big props for trying. He stuffed the watch in his pocket and looked around the office. "Okay. Anything we didn't check?"

"I don't think so."

"You taste anything suspicious?"

"Possibly," Fraser said. "We shouldn't discuss it here."

"Oh, right, yeah. Okay, let me go see if Maddy or Angelique is around, and then we can go."

"May I come with you? They wouldn't be sleeping at this hour, would they?"

Ray looked at his—well, Fraser's—watch. It was just after 2 pm. "Anything's possible, but it's not like knocking on the door at 6 am. C'mon."

They peeled their gloves off and climbed the back stairs up to the apartment, and Ray let Fraser do his polite Canadian door-knocking thing.

Angelique opened the door and ushered them in, calling for Maddy over her shoulder. She turned back to Ray, tucking a long red lock of hair behind her ear, and hooking a thumb into a belt loop on her jeans. "You got jitters about tonight?"

"Aw, no, not really." Ray smiled. "Probably have them when I actually have to step out there, huh?"

"Oh, don't worry," she said breezily. "Maddy'll push you."

That didn't give Ray any great feeling of security, but he tried to laugh like he got the joke. At least, he hoped it was a joke.

Maddy came out of the kitchen dressed in a long silky robe with tassels on it. Her hair wasn't quite up to its usual shiny perfection, but she'd clearly already done some spiffing up that day. She'd told Ray once that she was "high maintenance"—maybe that was what she meant.

She smiled and pulled Fraser and Ray into the living area of the little apartment, sitting them down on the orange sofa and perching on the ottoman herself, with her long legs folded under her. She took Ray's hand. "Nerves, huh?"

"Uh, no. I'm okay at the moment."

"Oh. So...?"

"Police work," Ray said, lowering his voice and pulling the evidence bag with the watch out of his pocket. "This look familiar?"

Maddy took one look at it and her already pale complexion went paler. "It's a watch."

"I can see that," Ray said. "So where'd you see it before?"

She looked down at her fingernails. One of them had a tiny bit of polish chipped off, and she worried it for a minute before speaking again. "I think it's Dino's."

"Huh." Ray looked at it. Granted it was a unisex style, one of those mesh ones with a cool, dark-gray face, but he didn't take Dino for the kind of guy who'd wear something so plain and classy. He held it closer to Maddy. "You think that would fit Dino?"

"Oh," she said. "I never thought of that. Might be a little small for him."

"Okay, so tell the nice detective where you saw it before. C'mon, spill." He tried to make it a joke.

"You're interrogating me?" she squeaked. "You don't think I had anything to do with..." She tilted her head in the direction of the bedrooms, towards where Charla had been found dead.

"With the murders? Uh, no, that wasn't my thought. I just figured I'd try to find out how my watch got into Dino's possession."

_"Your_ watch?" Her eyes went wide. "You're shitting me."

"Nope. Inscription on the back from my husband and everything." He managed to say that without tripping over any of it.

"Oh. We...we thought it was Dino's. He was walking around with it last week sometime."

"Like that Tuesday when I first came up here? Right after my lieutenant tossed me this case, I came up and interviewed Dino."

"You were here that day? Two days before..."

"Right. Two days before Charla got killed and two days before I met you. Tuesday before last."

"Oh. I had no idea."

"So, you gonna tell me?" He glanced at Fraser, but Fraser just nodded silently, like he was right there with Ray, on the same wavelength. It warmed Ray inside. It felt like having his own Fraser back.

Maddy sighed. "Sure, okay. We were doing something dumb, me and Angelique and Charla. See, Dino dropped the watch. We thought it was his. And, uh...there's stuff about Dino that's kind of hard to deal with, you know?"

"Such as?" Ray'd questioned her a few times over the past week and a half, sometimes without Maddy's even seeming to realize that he was fishing for information, but so far she'd never said one critical word about Dino. She'd seemed oddly protective of him, in fact.

"He doesn't like it when people talk about leaving him."

A long, long shiver went up Ray's back. This was it; he was going to hear something important, here. "People?" he said carefully, trying to sound really nonchalant, almost bored.

"Well, the _girls," _she said, giving the word that little spin that meant she was talking about the performers, the "girls" referred to in the club's name."He helped us all out a _lot_, at a really rough time in our lives. I was already turning tricks, but not like here, not like somebody _special_ like I am here. I'm like a classy escort here. Hell, I'm a diva. On the street I was somebody who got beat up a lot, called names. Some guys thought I was a gay tranny who'd had a sex change. I don't want to know what they thought, you know? There were drugs, there was...well." She shrugged. "You've probably seen it."

"Yeah," Ray said, because she was right. He'd seen way more of it in 18 years on the force than he'd wanted to.

"Dino got me out of that life," she said. "Now I sing and dance and have a great old time out there on stage, five shows a week."

"Yeah, it's pretty cool," Ray said, meaning it. "I'm glad. But, um...so Dino's a hero, huh? What's that got to do with taking a watch you thought was his?"

"We just borrowed it," she said. "I don't know why we never even realized there was an inscription. We were in kind of a hurry to get it back before he missed it, and..."

"Do you mind if I ask why you borrowed it?" Fraser said.

"It's kind of embarrassing," Maddy said. "It's not going to sound that believable."

"Try me," Ray said.

"We were doing a kind of a ritual. Kind of like a group meditation. See, we wanted to teach Dino a lesson. It was a stupid idea. Didn't work, anyway."

"What did you want to teach him?"

"Just wanted him to know what it's like to be us," she said. "We were kind of hoping to send him a dream or something. Something harmless like that, to clue him in."

"And he needs to know, because...?" Ray made tell-me-more gestures.

She sighed and sat back a little. "Look, Dino's been good to us. But it's like he doesn't want any of us to move on in our lives, do something bigger and better. And Charla, see, Charla had this thing she wanted to do. She wanted to move to San Francisco and go to art school. For photography. It's not the kind of thing you can do without a good income, you know, but in San Francisco, they got lots of drag clubs there; she figured she'd find something decent." Maddy looked down, dabbing at one eye and then the other. "Charla was really good. On stage and with her camera. She'd have made it good, I know she would."

"Where are her pictures?" Ray said.

"What?" Maddy squeaked.

"On her wall." Ray gestured toward the now-vacant bedroom. "There's just that one old Supremes poster. She was a good photographer, she must have had other stuff."

"Oh. Well, yeah," Maddy said. "Everything was in her portfolio, which she sent on to the school. Everything but a few snapshots, and the police...I mean the people in the lab coats, you know? They bagged them all up. I guess you'll find them at your police station, right?"

"Yeah, sure," Ray said. "I guess they might get released back to you if she really has no family like everybody said."

Maddy shrugged her thin shoulders kind of sadly. "Right. We're the only family she's got. Uh, had."

"And there's no will that we know of. So you'll probably get them back when we're done with them."

"Why did she want to travel so far?" Fraser asked. "Chicago has an abundance of excellent art schools."

"Yeah, I know, but she wanted to be out on her own."

"She didn't feel she was on her own here?" Fraser was pursuing that line of questioning like Dief pursued the Pizza Duo delivery car.

"Well, no. She was one of 'Dino's girls.' It's kind of like a family, like I said. And she was young, just twenty-two. She felt like it was time to leave home."

"Dino didn't want her to go?"

"No. He got pretty pissed about it."

"What, did he yell, threaten?" Ray asked. He saw where Fraser was going with this. They were getting somewhere.

"Oh, nothing like that. Dino doesn't get mad like that. He gets real quiet; he just...steams." She put a hand up to rub her neck. "I think of him like the train coming down the track, you know? The one you don't expect, when you're distracted, and all of a sudden it's there, whooshing past you so fast it pulls the air out of your lungs. And you think, I could have been lollygagging, hanging over the edge of the platform, and it would have flattened me." She sighed. "So you just gotta stay alert and not forget where you are."

"He ever lay a hand on you?"

"What, you mean hit us? No. Nothing like that."

"Good. That's good." Ray tried for a real casual tone. "So, uh, was Dino interested in her or any of the girls. You know, personally?"

"_Interested_ like...in a girlfriend?" She giggled. "Oh, no...no, he's kind of strange that way. I don't know what his attraction to people like us is, but it's not really sexual." She lowered her voice. "I don't think he even does sex."

To Ray that sounded even weirder than a perv who had a thing for hermaphrodites, but he figured it didn't matter what a guy's reason for murdering people was. If the creep did murder, the creep was going down, as long as Ray Kowalski had anything to say about it.

"How much were you making turning tricks for him?" Ray said. Weirdo or not, Dino could just be a pimp who didn't want anybody else cornering his tiny niche market.

"Good money," she said. "Like I said, not street rates, classy escort rates, five hundred and up. We're divas, after all."

Ray cracked a little smile at that.

"But it's not what you're thinking," Maddy went on. "He didn't take a huge percentage or anything, just a straight ten percent, and we don't pay rent here, the apartment's part of the performing deal."

"It don't cost the club much," Ray said. "The apartment's here, and he's already paying the utilities and everything on this place."

"Oh, yeah." She waved a hand. "Pretty typical for places like this, especially the ones that get a lot of out-of-town talent. They gotta have a place for the visiting performers to stay. A modest place this size doesn't get _that _much business, not so we can put anybody up at the Ritz."

"So do you get visiting performers here?"

"Oh, sure, a couple times a month, usually girls, or gay guys who do drag. They stay here with us. We've got bunk beds in Angelique's and my rooms, and this sofa folds out."

"Was anyone staying here the Wednesday evening before, er, Charla was found?" Fraser asked.

"No. We haven't had anybody else in a few weeks. Dino's been kind of...well, you've seen, Rae. He's been moping around, not really talking much. It makes sense, right? Three of us girls..." She took a breath and waved away whatever else she'd been going to say. "I have to focus," she said. "If I think about it, I'm going to go to pieces, and I don't want to do that."

It was Ray's turn to take her hand. He gripped it firmly. "You're doing good, Maddy. Show's going to be great tonight, right?"

She brightened. "Right!" She turned to Fraser. "Your wife's a wonderful dancer, Mr. Fraser. You're going to love the show."

"I'm sure I will," he said soothingly.

"So what happened with Charla after Dino got steamed?" Ray asked her quietly. "She get upset?"

"Huh. No, not really. I think she had her mind made up, and nothing anyone said was going to talk her out of it. She had some money saved. She figured she could maybe even leave in a week or two. So...no, she wasn't upset. Just...determined."

"Did Dino react to that?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. He's been kind of quiet lately—well, quieter than usual, even." She thought for a minute. "All I remember is that he came up and talked to Charla pretty late on that Wednesday night, and she was all quiet and everything afterward, like she was pretending he'd talked her out of it. But I don't think he had."

"He was here Wednesday night?" Ray heard his voice getting louder. He calmed himself down, taking a couple of breaths and letting them out before continuing. "How come nobody reported that fact before?"

"We forgot?" Maddy squeaked. "I don't know! I was so upset Thursday morning after Angelique and me found Charla, I forgot all about it. Dino came in and talked to us in the evenings after the shows all the time. It was like a routine. And when you people were questioning me, you kept asking if anything in Charla's routine had changed, so I wasn't thinking about the normal stuff."

Ray closed his eyes for a second, visualizing his notes. He opened his eyes. "You and Angelique were pretty positive you were the last people to see Charla."

"Yeah, I think we were."

Ray glanced at Fraser, who gave him a significant look. Something about what he'd tasted in Dino's office, Ray figured. Something Dino could have done before leaving that night, like slipping Charla a mickey.

"You guys have anything to eat or drink while Dino was here?" he asked.

Maddy shrugged. "I don't know. We didn't do anything different than usual. We have tea or something at night; sometimes somebody has a glass of wine."

"You have dinner late, after the show, right? Did you have dinner with him?"

"Not that night. Like I said, he was pretty steamed. He came in to talk to Charla around eleven, I think."

"And she was okay when he left?"

"Yeah. Kind of sleepy, and everything, but we all were."

"May I look around the kitchen?" Fraser asked all of a sudden.

"Help yourself," Maddy said.

Fraser shot Ray a glance and then went in there, and Ray heard him exchanging a couple of typically polite words with Angelique and then puttering around. After a few minutes, Fraser came out with his evidence gloves on, holding a fat terracotta jar.

"Was this tea here last week?" he asked.

"Sure. Been there a long time; it's probably stale by now."

Fraser took the cork top off it and sniffed at it. "It's not stale."

"Huh. That's weird, because I'm pretty sure Charla bought it like two years ago. Anyway, we usually make the stuff in teabags; it's easier."

Fraser held the container out so Ray could look in. It looked just like Fraser's kind of tea, loose in the jar, only with less twigs. He sniffed at it, but it just smelled like tea.

"Would anyone who was here have had access to the kitchen to make tea that evening?" he asked.

She shrugged. "Sure. Like I said, we're a family. Somebody always makes the tea. Doesn't matter who."

"It mattered on the Wednesday before last," Fraser said, his face solemn.

"Oh," she said. She clutched Ray's hand. "You found something wrong with it?"

"We'll have to test it to be sure," Fraser said.

"Crime scene guys missed it?" Ray asked.

Fraser nodded. "An unconscionable oversight. We'll need to see Dr. Gustafson also."

"Yeah, okay." Ray turned back to Maddy, patting her hand and letting it go as he stood up. "I gotta go. I'll see you around seven, okay?"

"You're still going to do the show?" she asked.

"Oh, sure. You think I want to waste all those rehearsals?" He smiled. "Look, we don't know if this is really a break in the case or not. It might not be. Either way, until we actually arrest and charge somebody, you're still in danger."

"Oh," she breathed. "Yeah. Sorry, I wasn't thinking." She got up off the ottoman, unfolding her long legs and stretching them out. "Okay. And I'm sorry about your watch."

Ray smacked his own head. "Jeez, I almost forgot. I meant to ask you what that ritual thing had to do with my watch."

"Well, we thought it was Dino's, remember? It's because if you're focusing a ritual on somebody, it's best to have something of theirs with you, and jewelry is the first choice. Stuff made of metal that people wear, it holds on to vibes. Supposed to, anyway. It isn't like he ever takes off those rings of his, so when the watch fell out of his pocket, we figured we'd caught a break."

"And the ritual was supposed to teach him that you wanted your freedom?" Ray was still confused on that point.

"Oh, no, we were thinking he'd get a dream, probably. We wanted him to experience what it was like to be us...one thing on the inside, something else on the outside, needing to be ourselves. I mean, he's got this thing about intersex people, right? We just thought, what if he got to experience being a drag queen or maybe an intersex person, someone who _looks_ like a woman, maybe even feels like one, but really isn't. We thought a dream, or maybe a daydream or vision or something. Figured it would make sense to him, and then he'd get how we're each our own person, and he'd let Charla go. But it didn't work."

Ray swallowed real hard. He looked at Fraser. Fraser looked as pale as Ray felt.

"Jesus," Ray said. "What if it did work?"

"What do you mean? Dino didn't change his mind a bit."

"It wasn't Dino's watch," Ray said. "It was mine."

"What, did you have weird dreams?"

"You could say that," Ray said. "You remember reading my cards?"

"Oh. Yeah. Only kind of vaguely. I don't always remember a lot about readings afterwards."

"But you remember the part about me not really being what I am inside? Like my inner persona is really female, which is backwards for somebody who looks female on the outside?"

"Right, I remember that."

"Well, you were right. More right than you know."

She looked confused, which made sense. "I'm sorry, I—I don't..."

"Anyway, it's not forever," he said. "You said it was going to wear off in a month."

"Oh. Is that good?"

"Yeah. Yeah, it's good."

"Good," she said. "I'm...sorry, Rae. If I did anything to hurt you, I'm so sorry. I don't really understand it, but..."

He held up a hand. "Let's just say I got Dino's dream, and leave it at that."

He looked over at Fraser. "And it's not always a bad dream. It sure is teaching me stuff."

Fraser looked at him steadily, but he didn't say anything. _Don't worry,_ Ray thought at him, hoping this Fraser could hear him the way his own Fraser so often seemed to.

"Oh," Maddy said, still sounding pretty remorseful. "Well, they say everything's a learning experience. That it's all part of your journey."

The inner journey of self-acceptance, Ray remembered. It was worth thinking about. In fact, he'd love to drop everything and think about it right now, except he had a murder to solve and a debut performance to do.

"Don't worry about me," he told Maddy gently. "I'll see you at seven. You're doing my makeup, remember?"

She brightened up. "Oh, yes. I can't wait, Rae. Prepare to be _fabulous."_

 

_   
_


	8. Fabulous

  
They went straight in to the 27th with the evidence. Ray was pretty sure the watch didn't have anything to do with the murders, but he'd learned his lesson about messing up the evidence chain with the Botrelle case, so he dutifully turned the watch in, too. Rae would get it back, that was the important thing. Ray made sure he wrote in the evidence report that he didn't think it was _germane_ to the case, and after there was an arrest, or even sooner if possible, Rae would like the watch back.

Meanwhile, he had Fraser's watch around his skinny wrist, and that was kind of neat in itself.

Fraser asked Mort a bunch of questions mostly in four-syllable words. When Ray came out of his coma, he sent most of the sample out to the tox lab with a request for them to rush the analysis. He didn't want to stick around down in the morgue, so he tried luring Mort upstairs with promises of coffee, and for once it actually worked. Ray got Frannie to make Mort a cappuccino (she scowled at Ray but was all smiles to Mort) and sat him down next to Rae's desk.

"I'm afraid I don't have a conclusive finding on the cause of death of the last one, Detective," Mort said sadly. "Forensic pathology is sometimes an inexact science, I am sorry to say."

"Yeah, I know. Fraser thinks the tea had something hinky in it."

"Possibly," Fraser said, kind of distractedly. "I detected the scent of kava root and possibly other impurities in what the apartment's occupants believed to be _Camellia sinensis_."

"Yeah," Ray said, like he knew what Camellia-whatsis meant, which he didn't.

"Well, kava can be a sedative in large doses," Mort said thoughtfully.

"Especially when mixed with other sedatives," Fraser prompted.

"And that's what you think was in the tea, Constable?"

"Possibly."

"I did find evidence of a fast-acting barbiturate in the blood of one of the first two victims," Mort said. "But it wasn't enough to kill. And the first two victims were already drug addicts. Given the various types of drugs they had used over a period of years, it would be difficult to say which one set up the conditions for a deadly reaction. With some drugs, any amount, at any time, could prove fatal."

"And you can't tell which one actually did?" Ray said.

"Sometimes we can," Mort said. "It depends on the drug, and it depends on how soon the body is found. There are many factors."

"Hm," Fraser said, not helpfully.

"What's 'hm'?" Ray wanted to know.

"I'm not sure," Fraser said.

"C'mon, Fraser. I hate it when you do that 'Hm' thing."

Fraser glanced up at him a little sharply, and Ray realized that he'd been thinking like this was _his_ Fraser. But, God, they were so alike, especially on the job, that it stood to reason Ray would find himself forgetting once in a while.

"All right, Ray," Fraser said. "I was just thinking that if a drug was put in the tea, anyone in the apartment might have drunk it. Perhaps everyone."

"And nobody else died."

"True. But we don't know that no one else was affected."

"Come again?"

"Well, barbiturates would tend, at the very least, to make a person sleepy," Fraser said. "And Maddy did mention they all were feeling sleepy that night."

"Oh. So they might sleep through an intruder or something, is that what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"It's certainly worth considering," Mort said in his solemn, deep voice. He looked thoughtful, too, just like Fraser.

"Something?" Ray asked.

"I will take another look at all three files for you," Mort said. He tapped the side of his nose with one long forefinger. "Some medical records were recovered from among the third victim's effects, and I'll go through those as well. Perhaps some interesting fact which was previously hidden will show itself to us now."

"Uh, good. Thanks." Ray said.

"You are most welcome, Detective." Mort got up and headed back downstairs, whistling some weird tune the whole way.

Ray turned to Fraser. "Camellia whatsits?"

"Ordinary tea, Ray."

Ray rolled his eyes, because why couldn't the guy just have said that in the first place? But he didn't have the energy to waste on chewing Fraser out over something Fraser was just going to do again anyway. So he clapped Fraser on the shoulder and told him they'd better get going so Ray could kick back and rest a little before the performance.

Being _fabulous_ was not something you just phoned in, after all.

  
They got up to _Dino's Girls _well before seven. Ray was kind of climbing the walls a little about the show, and Fraser finally couldn't take any more. They fed Dief and left him in the yard with plenty of water and his little shelter, and Dief promised not to do anything that would mean having to get bailed out of the pound.

Before the show, Ray pulled Maddy and Angelique aside and told them both that if anybody went up to the apartment after the show, even Dino (_especially_ Dino, he was thinking but didn't say out loud), they were not to let them in under any circumstances. Angelique hadn't heard most of the conversation with Maddy that afternoon, but Ray figured Maddy had filled her in.

Both girls agreed. Maddy grabbed Angelique's hand and squeezed it hard. "You think there's something to worry about tonight?"

"Nah, nothing specific," Ray said. "I just don't want to have to worry about you. I'll put a uniformed officer on duty here overnight, okay? He won't let anybody in after the doors get locked, not even Dino."

"Okay," she said.

"I hope not the one who called us names," Angelique said. "The older uniform cop. Everybody else was really nice, but I didn't like him."

"Who, O'Malley? Nah. Don't take him personally, okay? He hates everyone. Anyway, I'll make sure they send someone else." That was a no-brainer: Ray had sent a memo to O'Malley's lieu, so the jerk was probably being forced to take sensitivity classes right about now.

Then it was time for Ray to get suited up and let Maddy put that makeup stuff on his face (he tried to talk her out of it _again, _but she wasn't having any).

Between the time his makeup got done and the time his cue got called, he didn't do anything but pace and drink water. Fraser stayed with him till exactly a minute and a half before his cue and then he squeezed Ray's hand, whispered "break a leg," and melted into the wings somewhere, finding a good spot in the curtains where he could watch without being seen by the audience.

"Cue Rae," somebody said from nearby, a disembodied voice.

Maddy's hand was cold on Ray's wrist. "Knock 'em dead, Rae."

"Oh, God." Ray tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry. His knees felt weak. "I can't."

"You got to. Just do it the way we rehearsed." He felt her hand in the middle of his back. "It's okay. You're gonna be great."

"No, I can't. I gotta, I gotta pee. I'm going to—"

She pushed.

And he was out there, in the brilliant dark, and even though the stage wasn't really all that big, the whole club wasn't even such a huge place, and he could see the first row of tables, it still looked as big as a football stadium from where he was.

He felt blank, like he didn't know who he was, like he didn't remember a damn thing. What was he supposed to do? Oh, yeah. Undercover. He was undercover. Act the part.

It's just a dance.

He stood in the dark another second, and then he heard Maddy announcing him. He put on his stage face a half second before his spotlight came up. Then his music came up, and that song...it was impossible not to just let your feet go with it, your whole body move to it, and his body—Rae's, his, whosever—knew the drill and it moved. He danced.

And then it was over, he'd done it, and he couldn't believe it. It was over. All that work, and it felt like he'd spent about ten seconds total out there. The crowd stamped and hollered, and Maddy stuck a black feather boa around his neck and pushed him back out there to take another bow.

He managed it; he even managed a smile, thinking of the team hoisting him onto their shoulders in Willison after the walk-off grand slam; yeah, that was something, he didn't mind the crowd yelling then, did he?

Well this was another clutch performance, he told himself. He bowed and smiled and waved his boa—totally like a guy trying to _act _like a girl, but that was the image they expected anyway, right? And then he was in the wings, and one of the stage hands patted him on the back and made kissy noises, not obnoxious ones, not taunting him, but meaning it, and telling him he was fabulous.

"Uh, thanks." He headed for the dressing room quickly before he fell off the damn heels and onto his face.

Maddy was out there by now, launching into the first few bars of her final number, and Ray would be damned if he wrecked it for her with loud crashing noises from the wings.

Ray made it into the dressing room without any major mishaps.

And there was Fraser, waiting for him. His face...God, Ray had never seen that look on Fraser's face before. It melted him on the spot.

Fraser took one step toward him and opened his arms and engulfed Ray in them, looking like he was going on his gut, like he hadn't thought about it ahead of time. Like he maybe couldn't help hugging Ray at that moment, he was so overcome. His big arms went around Ray, so strong and warm, wow, and his mouth was on Ray's; he was kissing him, kissing him.

What he said he wouldn't do, he was doing. And God, Ray knew he should have pulled away, he knew it would have been the right thing to do, but this was _Fraser,_ as close as Ray was going to come to actually getting kissed by his Fraser, and Ray was only human. So he went with it. He melted into Fraser's arms and kissed him back for everything he was worth.

Eventually, Fraser seemed to recover. He broke the kiss and pulled gently back, but not before Ray felt Fraser's hot, hard cock poking him in the stomach despite the layers of clothing between them.

"Frase..." Ray was breathing hard. He gave himself half a minute to catch his breath. "I thought you didn't want...look, I'm good with this, I really am, whatever you want, but somebody could've walked in."

"They wouldn't think anything of it," Fraser said, but he sounded a little cranky. This was hard for him. This was wearing him down, Ray could tell. "They'd either see me kissing my wife or they'd see me kissing my, er, cross-dressed, androgynous partner. Either way, no one here would be particularly scandalized."

Oh. Right. Ray kept forgetting the one thing it should've been really, really hard to forget. He turned to the mirror to give himself a quick, harsh dose of reality. Rae's face stared back. Well, mostly Rae's face. There were hard lines around the mouth now that he was pretty sure had come in with him.

He turned back to Fraser, who was looking pretty tired, himself. And Fraser almost never looked tired.

"We should get out of here," Ray said, turning to the dressing table, wondering how quickly he could get out of the monkey suit, and wondering whether he even ought to do it with Fraser standing here.

Fraser stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Ray, why don't you call him by his first name?"

 "Huh?"

"Rae calls me 'Ben,'" Fraser said, a little awkwardly. "And he calls you 'Ray,' doesn't he? I was just wondering."

Ray hadn't thought about that. "I don't know, I just got started calling him 'Fraser' 'cause we were cop partners, guys, and it kind of stuck like that. It's...okay, it's kind of a cover, actually. 'Ben' sounds so... 'Ben' is what I'd call him if..."

"If you were lovers?"

That sent a shiver up Ray's neck, hearing that word in Fraser's voice. "Yeah. Something like that." He felt something twist inside him, low and tight, somewhere in his belly. Heat. Cold. He didn't know. Skip the costume change; he had to get out of this place.

Except—wait. He had a job to do. He couldn't just abandon the girls to a predator.

He pulled the boa off and draped it carefully over the chair, and then took off his costume jacket and hung it up. Behind him, he heard Fraser fidgeting with something. If he'd had the Stetson with him, Ray knew he'd have been turning it around and around in his hands, but Fraser had left the uniform and hat behind in order to avoid drawing attention to himself.

There was a heavy footstep at the door. Ray whirled. Dino stood there, a bit flushed, his eyes bright, blinking rapidly. His jaw was set tightly, making his cheeks look even more jowly than usual.

"Have a word with you?" he said to Ray.

Ray looked at Fraser. Looked back at Dino. Shrugged. "Okay."

Fraser looked from one to the other. "Ah. I see. I'll, ah...I'll be right outside, Ray."

"No," Ray said. He turned to Dino. "You don't got anything to say to me that you can't say in front of Fraser."

Dino shuffled his feel for a second, like he hadn't expected that reaction at all. Finally he said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"I saw your performance. You're a natural."

Huh. That sure wasn't what Ray'd expected to hear. He scratched his neck. "You think?"

"Oh, yeah. Real...natural." Dino cracked his knuckles, his rings clinking against each other. "So, you a pro?"

"A _what? _Are you asking if I'm a _working girl?"_ You asshole, he thought. Too bad Rae's husband was a polite Canadian, because that there, that was license to punch Dino out on the spot.

Hell, Ray might've done it himself, even with Rae's delicate fists. Except it would probably get Dino off the arrest long enough to really screw up the case, and that could cost someone their life. Ray clenched his fists at his side.

Dino didn't seem to notice. "You done this before? Drag. Dance. Stage work?"

Fuck and fuck. Best way out was through, Ray'd always thought. Usually as loudly and obnoxiously as possible. "What? I'm a cop."

Dino was shaking his head. "There's something about you. The way you wear that suit. I gotta tell you, you do drag king better than I ever saw anywhere. It's like you really are a guy."

Ray was dumbfounded. He glanced over Dino's head to Fraser.

Fraser lifted a finger to the side of his nose, gave Ray the Butch Cassidy sign real quick.

Oh. "Don't know what you're talking about," Ray said carefully.

"You don't talk like a girl. You don't walk like a girl."

"Yeah, well I haven't, uh, practiced that much," Ray said. "In heels, I mean. I don't usually wear heels." Like _never_. Whoa, stupid; that sounded stupid.

"Tomboy, huh?"

"What's it to you?"

Dino shrugged. "Nothing personal; just business. I know talent when I see it. You can dance."

Ray could barely _walk_ in the stupid high-heeled boots, but at least he'd gotten through the routine. He shrugged, too. "I'm nothing special. Just been dancing since I was a kid."

"Well, it shows. Listen, would you think about dancing here again? On the payroll? When all of this blows over, I mean."

_Blows over? _Three murders, and the guy thought they were just going to "blow over"? Ray's internal cop radar screen lit up like the fourth of July.

But there was this little thing called evidence. He didn't have it.

"I, uh. I don't think this is the right kind of moonlighting gig for, uh. For my pay grade. I don't think my lieutenant's gonna go for that."

"Oh," Dino said. "The pay's good, though. We're exclusive."

"How's that? There's three other drag bars within spitting distance of here."

"We're the only club that's got the real deal."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Our performers look like girls _under_ the dress. And they didn't need no operation to do it."

"So, what, that makes them much better _hookers_?" Ray said, though biting sarcasm didn't sound quite as sharp in Rae's softer voice.

"Hey, look," Dino said in an _I don't want no trouble, officer_ kind of voice. "They're singers and dancers."

"Who turn tricks on the side."

"If they do anything on the side it's their business. It ain't my business."

"You're saying you don't take a cut. You're not a pimp."

"I'm not a pimp. I'm an impresario."

"Who just happens to arrange paid 'dates' for his divas."

Dino waved a pudgy hand, dismissively. "If their dates want to show them a good time, I don't interfere."

Ray scowled, but zipped his lip. There wasn't any evidence that the girls were being coerced into the dates, and if he was stupid enough to try an off-the-cuff interrogation here in the dressing room, without an arrest and a charge and a freaking lawyer present, he could probably kiss the rest of the case goodbye right now.

"I ain't a hooker," he said finally.

"I'm only talking about dancing, just like you did tonight. With lip-sync if you want. Or not."

Ray didn't know how to answer that. "No way, José," wouldn't keep Dino talking, and the first thing you learned in detective training was to keep the perp talking. "Yes" was out of the question. And "maybe" would be an outright lie, because the real answer was "No way, José."

Dino seemed to see a maybe on Ray's face, though, because he said calmly, "Just think about it," and went out.

Ray looked at Fraser.

Fraser was looking thoughtful. "Perhaps it would be best not to answer one way or the other for a while, so that he concludes you are entertaining the idea. To, er, keep him on the string, so to speak."

"Huh? You mean string him along?"

"String him along," Fraser repeated, tapping his temple with his forefinger like a person trying to remember a foreign phrase. "Right."

"You're talking about _deceiving_ him?" Ray said, cracking a smile at the very thought. Fraser, who couldn't even bluff at poker?

"Well, no, of course not. But perhaps just allowing him to continue to believe what he already does, and not disabusing him of the notion just yet. He may trip himself up."

Which, yeah. Fraser might be a terrible bluffer, but he also cleaned up at the poker table every damn time. Ray really had to get that through his thick head.

"Yeah, okay," he said. "String him along, gotcha. Poker Fraser-style."

"I beg your pardon?"

Ray sighed. "Nothing, partner. C'mon, let's go get the uniforms squared away for the night and then get the hell out of here. I don't know about you, but I'm toast. I feel like I'm stuck in a bad _Star Trek_ episode, and all I want is for Scotty to beam me the hell up."

Fraser looked at him like he'd just said something in a language Fraser didn't speak. Which, considering Fraser spoke three official flavors of Canadian, plus Spanish, German, Italian, Chinese, Wolf, Semaphore, and God-knows-What-situt, that was pretty amazing.

They left the girls in their apartment with Miller and Beaufort at the door, two big, buffed uniforms that Ray knew from his own 27th. Good cops, both of them, totally trustworthy.

Then they took off for home, with Ray putting the pedal down as close to the metal as Fraser would tolerate, only a little over the speed limit.

The extra caution turned out to be a good thing, because the realization hit Ray between the eyes right at the moment he was swerving to avoid a pothole. He overcorrected the wheel a little, and Fraser had to put a hand on the dash to steady himself, and that knocked Ray out of his stupor. He signaled and pulled to the curb before he caused an accident.

"Ray, what is it?" Fraser sounded pretty concerned. "Are you all right?"

Ray held up a hand. "Nah, I'm fine. It just hit me."

"What did?"

 "This isn't _Star Trek_. It's _Quantum Leap_."

"I beg your pardon?"

Right, TV made in the last 30 years was not in Fraser's lingo. It'd take all night to explain, so Ray cut to the chase. "American TV reference; never mind. The point is, I got a hunch, I got a feeling. This _is_ something I'm here to do, and when I do it, I get to go back to my own life, my own body."

They were close enough to a street light that he could see Fraser's expression: riveted on him, serious...maybe calm, Ray didn't know. If Ray was in Fraser's place he'd be just this side of screaming hysteria, he figured, but then again, he probably was batshit insane already, what with the being a girl and in the wrong universe and everything.

So he wasn't really a good judge of someone else's freakish reactions. Still, Fraser looked calmer than Ray felt.

"Do you have any idea what that might be?" Fraser said after moment.

"No. I mean, solve the case, yeah, but Rae would solve it, I'm sure."

"I'm sure she would. Although I'm not sure she could have done the dance routine you just did."

"What? I thought you told me she dances, too."

"Well, yes, but she moves like woman. That is, like a woman who has always been a woman."

"Oh," Ray scrubbed a hand over his face. He rested his head against the steering wheel. "Can't be that."

"Why ?"

"Because I did the routine and I'm still here, I'm still...not me."

"Well, then, maybe it is the arrest."

Ray sighed. "Yeah, maybe." But it just didn't add up. Rae was a good detective; he'd seen that much from her case files, and Fraser was her partner. Ray wasn't doing anything that she couldn't do, so if she were here, she'd solve this thing just like he was going to.

He shook his head hard to clear it, put the car back in gear and headed for home. Well, Rae's and Fraser's home, which was as close as he was going to get tonight, he figured.

But when he was tucked up tight in bed with Fraser, with Rae's Fraser, and he tried to close his eyes and go to sleep, all he saw on the inside of his eyelids was a weird image of Scott Bakula in a dress, looking pregnant, and, he did not need that image, he really didn't.

He squirmed around in bed, trying to get comfortable, and he couldn't. He couldn't even seem to make himself lie still. And his field were cold; his feet were so damn cold.

"Ray?" That was Fraser's concerned voice. Ray mentally kicked himself.

"Just thinking, Frase. Can't seem to stop thinking. _Quantum_ Leap."

"You didn't really explain that."

"There was this scientist guy, and he wanted to time travel, only it kind of backfired on him," Ray said.

"Ah. A modern morality tale."

"Yeah, maybe." Trust Fraser to try to make some eggheaded thing out of it. "Never mind. This whole thing is freaky. It's probably all just an intense dream, anyway."

Which was where Ray had come in, right? And it was weird for sure, but it still didn't feel like a dream, even a recurring one. Especially since, with any dream, you eventually woke up. More likely, he'd finally given out under the pressures of police work and was now cracking up in some mental ward somewhere.

"Or maybe I've finally gone off the deep end."

"You think so?" Fraser whispered back. God, he sounded almost _hopeful._ What a crappy thought. Like he'd rather have Rae here, cracking up mentally, than think she was away in another dimension being the male version of her...

...and maybe never coming back. Yeah. Ray could get where Fraser was coming from.

Ray sighed. "Maybe. I don't know. I can't let myself think too hard about any of it. I got to _not _think, and I don't know how to stop." His hands started to shake.

Instantly Fraser was right up in his face again, as close as when they were kissing, and Fraser was gripping his hands tightly, holding them still. "Ray, look at me. Hang on. Elaborate dream or science fiction or some aspect of reality we aren't familiar with—whatever it is, I'm here with you. We'll figure it out together."

Ray turned toward him even though he couldn't really see him in the darkened bedroom. Just a dark shape, hovering near. "You realize I'm not her?" he whispered back.

"Mm-hm. You're not Rae; well, not exactly. You're who she would have been had she been born male. Well, that is...well, I think...I'm not sure, Ray. But we have so little to go on."

But Ray was nodding, his cheek smooth against Fraser's slightly rougher one in the dark. "Yeah, I think it's something like that. I'm the male her, she's the female me."

"Rae's _animus," _Fraser whispered back. "Yes. That's how you seem to me. Which is, I suppose, why you seem so very familiar despite the differences. It's as though you've been inside her psyche all along."

Ray swallowed. "When I close my eyes—well, at least when I'm not seeing pregnant Scott Bakula, which don't ask, you don't want to know—when I close my eyes, I'm me again, Fraser. I feel like me, I almost don't feel any different. She's me in some kind of way I don't understand. And I don't feel so crazy...when my eyes are closed."

Fraser squeezed his hands gently. "Close your eyes, Ray."

So Ray did. "Thing is," he said, "when I open my eyes again every morning I'm her, and I can't...I can't be her. I can't do this forever, Fraser. I gotta get back to my own life, my own body. And my Fraser." He paused, suddenly feeling bad because he'd just told Fraser he was second best, and that didn't seem like a great thing to say to Fraser, any Fraser. "I'm sorry. I love you just as much, you gotta know that."

"I do," Fraser said, his voice cracking a little on the words.

"So if I had to give up trying, if I was stuck here—" Ray's hands started to shake again, but Fraser held them tighter, stilling them. "this would be the next best thing, because I'd still have you," Ray finished.

A thread of doubt wound itself into knots in his gut, cold and heavy. "God, you don't think...it's not..." He couldn't keep his hands still, now his shoulders were in on it, too, shaking so hard the covers rustled. Fraser hung on, anchoring him in place.

"You don't think I could've—we could've—died without realizing it, do you? And this is the next thing?"

Fraser was quiet a minute, and then he said, "No, I think my father would be bothering me a lot more often if that were the case."

_"More often?_ What's that supposed to mean? Like he's bugging you now?" Ray shivered and deliberately didn't look anywhere else in the room. His eyes had adjusted and he could make out the vague shapes of Fraser's features in the dark, so he focused on those.

"Well, I see him fairly frequently now," Fraser said, "but if I had died, I've no doubt he'd be showing up quite a bit more with his confusing advice, attempting to tell me how to manage the afterlife just as he attempts to manage my Earthly life."

Ray hoped glad he didn't look as stupidly dumbfounded as he felt. "You are definitely a freak."

"So you've informed me on more than one occasion."

"But you're _my_ freak."  
   
Except how he wasn't. He was Rae's.

"Yes, Ray," Fraser answered him quietly. "I think I am."

God only knew what that meant, but Ray felt better. He wasn't shaking any more, and he was pretty sure he was still this side of the chasm of screaming insanity.

Fraser, though, might have one foot over the edge, but then again, it wasn't the first time Ray'd had that thought, even in his own universe.

Fraser let go of his hands and settled against him, his head tucked into the hollow of Ray's shoulder, his breath warm on Ray's neck. "Are your eyes still closed, Ray?"

"Yeah," Ray said, closing them.

"Who are you now?" Fraser asked.

"I don't know, Frase. I don't really know. Maybe I never did."

"Can you sleep?"

"Yeah, I think so.

He could.

In his dreams, Ray was himself again, a man, born a boy, had been a guy his whole life, right from the beginning...

_—in those pictures I got a dick, Fraser, and cute little baby balls..._

_—they said, Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Kowalski, you got a son. They said that, Fraser._

_—and Fraser always nodded, believing him. I know that, Ray._

In his dreams, Ray followed Fraser down alleys and into warehouses full of bad guys who were better armed than Ray, and up a thousand stairs to the tops of tall buildings, and off the fucking _pier _into Lake Michigan_, _even though Ray couldn't fucking _swim, _because that's what it was like being Benton Fraser's partner.

In his dreams, he jetted sky-high off a sinking ship into Lake Superior, and how was it possible that was real and his life as Rae _wasn't? _

In his dreams, all he could remember of the _Henry Allen_ incident was Fraser kissing him, kissing air into his lungs, and then later telling Ray it wasn't a kiss, it didn't _change_ anything....

Except how it changed everything, because after the kissing-breathing incident, they both had turned down their pending transfers for no reason except staying together; which, it turned out, was the only thing that seemed to matter to either one of them.

After that underwater kissing thing which wasn't a kiss, they were like _this,_ they were tight, like Ray's fingers when he crossed them. Which he did a lot, at least mentally, every time Fraser pulled another of his damnfool superhero stunts.

In his dreams, Ray was strong and he was a man; he boxed and he danced and he sometimes woke up sweaty and tangled in the sheets, and jerked his cock into his fist, yelling Fraser's name into the darkness...

In Rae's bed, he still jolted awake most mornings with Fraser's name on his lips, wet between his legs and clutching a fistful of air.

 


	9. Almost Normal

  
Ray rehearsed at _Dino's Girls_ all the next week, getting used to performing, and getting his routine down so well he could do it in his sleep. By the time Thursday rolled around again, he actually almost felt ready to go on. It was quiet all that week, nobody doing anything threatening, the girls under guard every night without even one complaint from Welsh over all the personnel that this case was yanking away. Ray could get that; after three murders, the department didn't need a lot of convincing that the girls needed the protection, and Welsh said once the case got tossed to his detectives, he would be damned if it wasn't his detectives who cleared it, so he authorized Ray and Fraser to drop everything else and nail the bastard before he claimed a fourth victim.

There wasn't going to be a fourth victim, Ray promised himself. If the universe or God or whatever had seen fit to do this freaky thing to Ray so he could solve the case or solve himself, he was damn well going to get it right. He wanted his own body back. He wanted his own life back. He wanted his own _Fraser_ back.

So he needed to stay alert, especially every time he crossed the threshold of _Dino's Girls._ His performance was a routine, of course, memorized cold so that he didn't have to think about it, so that he could spend his days up there sneaking into every corner of the place without anybody's getting suspicious. But if he went on autopilot at any point, even while dancing, he was going to start losing his edge, and that would be noticed. Little errors would lead to big errors, and the stakes were life or death, maybe for a lot of people.

Each time Ray performed, he worked in one little thing that he hadn't done before, one new twist, sometimes literally. It kept him focused, and it kept the performance feeling fresh, and the audiences responded to that, applauding harder each time he went out there.

He was almost getting _good_ at it, this performing thing, which was queer as hell to think about, but not as weird as the fact that he was almost starting to feel comfortable in Rae's skin. Yeah, every morning when he woke up, he had this shock, a miniature version of the one he'd had the first time, but even the little shock was getting kind of routine. _Oh, yeah, right, still Rae,_ would go through his head, and then he was up and taking a piss (sitting down, don't look, don't think about it) and then hauling himself in the kitchen for some coffee, which Fraser—bless that wonderful man, bless the entire nation of Canada—had all ready for him, every single morning.

Damn, Ray could get used to that, he thought. It would be nice enough to have just about anybody make him coffee every morning, but it was _Fraser, _his partner, who was out there waiting for him in the kitchen, looking spit-shined and perfect in his red uniform, incredibly fucking handsome despite the new worry line that seemed to have settled permanently between his eyes.

Fraser was either used to getting up earlier than Rae, or he was deliberately making himself scarce in the morning because of how, most nights, he ended up half wrapped around Ray, just like the first couple of mornings. Ray figured Fraser probably wanted to go take care of his "untoward" reactions by himself.

So no matter how early Ray hauled himself out of bed, he usually found Fraser already in the kitchen, eating a wholesome breakfast. He always offered Ray some, though Ray declined it most of the time, still not wanting to look at food most mornings, even if it would've been better for him.

But God, what he wouldn't give to have his own Fraser waiting for him like that, instead of how it really was, where Ray was alone in his apartment and Fraser was alone in his office on the other side of town, and neither one of them had anybody waiting for them in the morning. Well, except Fraser had Dief and Ray had Speedy Gonzales, but the wolf and the turtle weren't the same as human company, no matter how human either one of them sometimes seemed. And Speedy was a good listener, but he wasn't all that cuddly.

Ray usually slouched into the kitchen and sucked down his first cup of coffee while watching Fraser eat, neither of them saying much, just sharing the space and the morning sun coming in through the windows overlooking their little backyard.

And every morning, the first glance he got from Fraser was this expectant, half-scared, half-hopeful look, and every morning Ray shook his head, knowing his mouth was set in kind of a grim line: _Sorry, buddy. Still not your Rae._

And Fraser swallowed hard and made one curt little nod and went on with his breakfast, which he was more pushing around his plate than eating, Ray noticed—and that was so not like the Fraser he knew, who had a hearty appetite and the energy level to match.

This Fraser, Rae's Fraser, was kind of hunching in on himself more every day, like he was closing himself off, little by little, from the reality he couldn't stomach.

After a week of mornings like that, Ray finally got fed up, so to speak, and after he'd poured his coffee and taken a few good, hot gulps, he whacked Fraser's shoulder gently. "Hey. You keep that up, you're gonna be skinnier than me, and you're not gonna be able to catch that next litterbug or purse snatcher you try to run down in an alley. Before you know it, Chicago will be overrun with petty criminals and Canada will die of shame."

Fraser cracked a smile, then, and Ray realized, startled, that he hadn't seen a smile on Fraser's face in days.

"I'm sorry, Ray. Sitting here feeling sorry for myself is rather ridiculous. Considering what you and Rae are going through, it's unforgivable, I imagine."

Ray shook his head. "Are you kidding? Not only is it forgivable, it's totally understandable. In your place, I'd be doing the same, except with a lot stiffer drink in my mug than coffee."

"You're keeping your equilibrium quite well," Fraser said. "At least I still have my own body, my own life. I don't know how you're doing it, but I suspect it's because of your innate flexibility. I don't seem have that quality."

Ray snorted. "Are you living in the tundra right this minute, Fraser? Are you living twenty blocks from where you grew up, with your parents a short drive away, ready to come tune up your car, iron your shirts, and fix enough pierogi for your entire neighborhood at a moment's notice? No, you are not. I'd say you're plenty flexible."

But Fraser had caught his breath sharply. "Oh, God, your parents! Er, I mean...Rae's parents. What would they think?"

Ray sighed. "Yeah, I...the thought crossed my mind once or twice, about what it'd be like seeing them, but I figured let's not freak out any more people than we absolutely have to. When's the last time they were here?"

"Just before the transference. Damian helped Rae install a new carburetor in her GTO."

Ray smiled. "Yeah. My dad did that." He sobered. "I'm not sure they're gonna be good with not seeing me for a month, especially not after just, you know, coming back from Arizona after all those years. My dad and I only just started talking again; if I don't see them for a month, I don't know what they'll think."

"You and your father weren't speaking?" Fraser said, sounding surprised.

"Yeah, he didn't want me to be a cop. Rae didn't have that?"

Fraser shook his head. "She's been on reasonably good terms with her parents all along, as far as I know. They go to Arizona in the winter, but they've never lived there year-round."

"Wow." Ray tried to imagine that. Imagined not having gone through any of that crap with his dad, not having been divorced from Stella...and getting Fraser, getting Fraser to fall in love with him and marry him. Uh, her. Yeah, even in his imagination, it felt pretty damn different than the life he'd had. Rae was probably a much more secure person, he figured. Maybe she liked herself better than Ray liked himself, huh? Maybe she didn't feel like such a loser so much of the time.

It'd be a good feeling, he thought. Something he probably should try, if he could figure out how...after he got back to his own body, his own life.

One dilemma at a time, he decided. He couldn't exactly solve everything while dancing on the head of a pin...or however that went.

Ray cleared his throat. "Look, Frase, if my parents—I mean, if Rae's parents call, you gotta talk to them. If her mom talks to me she'll know something's hinky and she'll never let go of it till she's found out the truth."

"That sounds very like a detective I know."

"Yeah, maybe that's where Rae and I get it from."

"Very well. If they phone, I'll give them to understand that you're—well, that Rae is—away on an assignment of a sensitive nature, and that she'll contact them after she has successfully completed it."

"Okay. But if she's essentially the same as my mom, that'll only hold her off about two weeks, tops."

"If Maddy was correct, and if all goes well, we'll only need two more weeks," Fraser said.

"Yeah," Ray said. But he put his coffee down and sat on his hands to prevent them from starting with the shaking thing again. Because all going well was a hell of a big "if."

  
Ray got through the weekend's performances on sheer guts and cop discipline. Every night he reminded himself how he had to stay alert, watch for Dino to slip up, and if his hunches were wrong and it wasn't Dino, then he had to be doubly alert, because the killer could be anywhere, could be casing the joint any time, looking for his next victim.

Besides Maddy and Angelique, there was a girl named Rachelle who'd worked for Dino off and on, and after Ray's second weekend, Dino suddenly brought her in and told Maddy to slot her into the rehearsals, with her debut set for Ray's third weekend performing.

Rachelle was tall and leggy like Maddy, and she was real pretty, but in that waiflike kind of way that made you want to buy her a sandwich on the spot. She had a medium-dark complexion and big, sad brown eyes that made Ray wonder what kind of crap she'd been through. He didn't want to question her just yet; she looked like she'd go to pieces if he did. Although somebody told Rachelle he was a cop, they didn't tell her he was investigating the murders, and Maddy said she never asked: Rachelle seemed to take Ray's presence totally in stride, as though she saw cops moonlighting as quasi-drag performers every damn day.

Or more as if nothing had the power to surprise her any more.

And like she didn't particularly care.

That worried Ray. Once people got fatalistic like that, they also tended to be more likely to turn up as fatalities.

Rachelle wasn't staying in the performers' apartment, and that worried him even more, because it opened up a second potential site for the perp to go after a victim—namely, her place.

He got Welsh to okay another 24-hour stakeout to watch Rachelle's place, plainclothes officers so they wouldn't arouse too much suspicion in Rachelle's neighborhood, and then he went in to the station and had her checked out six ways from Sunday. But she was who she and Maddy had said she was, just a girl who'd been a semi-regular at the club for a couple of years. And there was no way Ray could see that she could be the perp herself, especially since she had been performing in New York during two of the three murders, well documented.

So he convinced Maddy and Angelique to talk her into moving into the apartment, and he and Fraser even went in and helped them haul out Charla's old stuff and repaint the room beforehand.

"There's nothing like a fresh coat of paint to spruce up a room," Fraser'd said almost cheerfully, the freak, as he did the ceiling with a long roller and didn't get even one tiny speck on his clothes or hair or anything.

Ray, on the other hand, spent an hour washing paint out of his hair afterward.

It was almost _normal._

That was another thing that was pretty damn scary. It was beginning to look like nothing had the power to surprise Ray any more, either, and really, how could it? If—_when_—Ray got back to his own life, how could any other hand he got dealt ever trump waking up as Rae?

  
Rachelle did great on the weekend, Ray's third weekend, and so did Ray, even though he had to do his performance twice each on Friday and Saturday, an early and a late show each night. The audiences had caught up with the fact that things were "back to normal." They'd flocked back and brought reinforcements, and there was an air of excitement to the club, almost like things were actually _good,_ like people hadn't been getting _murdered, _and Ray thought the audiences had to be pretty unhinged to try to ignore it. But human nature was a screwy thing, that was a fact.

As for the audiences...well, a lot of the clientèle were locals, residents of Boystown and the surrounding areas, and since the early Eighties they'd been pretty damn aware of how short life could be, and how it didn't pay to take the good stuff for granted.

After the second show on Saturday was in the bag, Maddy flounced into the dressing room, her cheeks flushed, and planted a big kiss on each of Ray's cheeks. He felt himself blushing back at her. He'd blushed in the dressing room a lot the first week, changing with the girls, never knowing where to _look,_ how to act natural when it was the last thing he felt. He'd only gotten through it by focusing on something else in the room, like the costume rack, or even on his own reflection in the mirror, seeing Rae, reminding himself: _This is what the girls are seeing. This is who I look like to them, just another girl. _And when he accidentally met Angelique's or Maddy's eyes and he blushed, they just smiled back, and one time Angelique said to him, "We know you're kind of bi, Rae. It's really okay."

And that had just made him chuckle, because, really, she had no idea. But he'd relaxed after that, and the atmosphere of the dressing room got a lot easier.

But this was the first time one of the girls had _kissed_ him, if only on the cheeks, and it got him flustered all over again. "What's that for?"

"Because you're fabulous. You're fabulous, Rae, and so is Rachelle, and Angelique has always been fabulous, and you guys are good to go without me for a while."

Ray took an unsteady step back on his heeled boots, untied but still on his feet, and didn't even realize how far he'd moved till he banged into the counter—ouch. "Hey. What the hell's that supposed to mean? Where are you going?"

He wished Fraser was in the room, but of course he wasn't, because women were changing in here. Damn him and his chivalry. Ray needed him to hear this.

Maddy sighed and sat down on one of the dressing chairs, patting the seat of another one until Ray sat down in it.

"I've been thinking," Maddy said. "About Charla. She'd been talking about going for photography for years. And she never got up the courage till just a few weeks ago. She mailed out some portfolios, which she had to do extra dates to be able to afford, and I helped her write a letter for admissions, and send for her high school transcripts, and stuff. She went through a lot of trouble to get accepted to school, and she was finally going to follow her dream. Only, turns out it was too late."

"Yeah," Ray breathed. "I know."

"We talked about maybe going out to visit her. Dino is closed for the week after New Year's, and Charla would've had school break then, and it would've been fun. We could've caught up on what she was doing, seen her work, maybe gone out on the town, even." She sighed, and picked absently at one long, lacquered nail. "God, I miss her."

Angelique, who'd been fussing with something glittery over by the costume rack, came over and put an arm around Maddy's slim shoulders and squeezed tight, but she didn't speak, and after a minute, she drifted back over towards the costumes.

Maddy blinked her fake eyelashes real hard a few times. "Thanks, honey." She turned back to Ray. "Anyway, I've been thinking. If Charla'd decided to go follow her dream sooner, maybe she'd be out there now, you know? Maybe none of this would have happened. Even when I'm feeling superstitious and think it must have been her time, I think that at least she'd have had some time in San Francisco, doing what she wanted, feeling free, feeling good. Or a month, even. Or a week. A beautiful week, Rae."

Ray couldn't help himself; he reached out and took her hand. "Don't. You're only torturing yourself, Maddy. Why would you do that?" He was the last person who should ask such a question, considering the colossal fool he'd made of himself over Stella. But perspective was famously a bitch.

Maddy put her other hand over his and patted it. "I'm okay. I'm good. I've just been thinking—I want my beautiful week, Rae. Or month." She smiled. "Heck, why not get crazy? Maybe even year."

"You into photography, too?"

She shook her head. "Fashion design. They got everything at that school, and even if I can't get into the regular program, I could maybe take a class at a time until they let me in. I'm persistent."

"Don't I know it," Ray said, thinking of the way she'd shoved him onto the stage his first night performing.

"And I could do it in Chicago, of course, but..." She sighed. "Charla was onto something about...about, getting out from under the family's wing. Being my own boos. Maybe start a business. I don't really want to stop performing, but...just a thought. I could try it."

She smiled and the mood lightened up. "So, what do you say? Angelique knows the drill here as well as I do, and it's not like Rachelle is really new here, she's back in the swing already, and if Dino finds a new girl, or maybe a guy for a change, Angelique can push them out on stage just like I've been doing." She lifted her chin at Angelique across the room. "Better work out harder, honey. If we get any more strong girls like Rae in here you're gonna need muscles."

Angelique chuckled, not sounding surprised at anything Maddy had said, so clearly the girls had discussed this already.

And they were talking like Ray was one of them, like he was _staying. _Whoa. Was Maddy forgetting about the murders, forgetting Ray was a cop who was only here temporarily?

"Maddy, I—I'm not—"

"Yeah, I know," she said. "I know. It's all mostly wishful thinking. And I know you got a better life out there waiting for you, you got a husband and a future..."

Yeah, he wished. But Rae did, for sure, and Ray was damn well going to see that she got the chance.

"Still, you got real talent as a dancer, and being a cop is _dangerous._"

Ray restrained himself from pointing out that the statistics from Maddy's end didn't look too damn good, either.

"Anyway, Dino can always get more. It's not like we got a shortage of drag queens in a big city like this, and I've been after Dino for a couple of years to branch out, get some regular ones in here, you know? So he wasn't stuck in case, I don't know, we all got the flu at once, or something." She looked over at Angelique and laughed. "Be weird to have an actual guy in the dressing room every night, but what the heck, right?"

Yeah, if only she knew.

"Anyway, I won't leave for a month or two, okay? I'll talk to Dino, let him know to start looking for somebody now."

The back of Ray's neck prickled suddenly, a creepy feeling. He rubbed at it. "No. "Don't say anything to Dino about leaving."

"Why not? I mean, I know he'll probably try to talk me out of it and stuff, but really, he's going to need time to find a replacement. I owe it to him to give some notice."

"Maddy, get a clue. Where are the other performers who gave their notice, huh?"

"Well, they..." She stopped, and a frown creased her normally smooth features. "No. Rae, you can't mean..."

"They're six feet under, Maddy, is where they are."

"Charla didn't give notice," Maddy said, but her voice had gone weak and strange.

"Right. She didn't even get that far."

"Look, Dino's...overprotective. He wouldn't hurt us. He loves us, in his own way."

"Yeah, well. We don't know who else Charla told, or who Dino told. Look, I don't got a whole theory here yet, or anything. I just get...feelings about things, you know? Hunches. And this hunch says, you don't tempt fate. Look, I'm just asking you to be a little patient. It's not forever." God, he hoped not.

"All right," she said slowly. "How long?"

"Soon," Ray said. "I got an idea. I just got to talk to Fraser about it. Just give me a day or two, okay? And don't say anything to Dino till after I okay it."

She sighed. "Okay, Rae. If you think that's best."

"I do. Angelique, too." He looked over at her, meeting her eyes in the mirror that covered the far wall. "You zip, okay? Not a word to anyone about Maddy or anybody leaving till I tell you that it's okay. Don't even tell Rachelle. It could mean life or death."

She nodded, her face serious. "Okay. I promise."

"Okay." Ray twitched up out of the chair and started scrambling out of his costume. He had to get to Fraser, talk this out.

Even as he pulled on his street clothes, his brain was busy working out a plan.

  
Fraser hated the plan.

Actually, he allowed that it was a pretty clever idea—and privately, Ray thought this had more than a little to do with the fact that Fraser himself had thought up the seed of it, the stringing-Dino-along bit—but he didn't like Ray putting himself in harm's way. He thought they could probably keep gathering forensic evidence until there was just so much of it that an arrest would stick, and then the justice system would magically work from there.

Ray could just imagine Stella rolling her eyes at that one.

"Has the constable ever _experienced_ the justice system in this city?" he could hear her mocking.

Ray paced in their kitchen, six strides across, and six back. He turned on the faucet, put his hands under the water, turned it off, and shook his hands over the sink. He pressed his cool fingers to his face, then wiped his face on the edge of his sleeve and his hands on his jeans. "I hate to have to remind you, Frase, but I'm kind of on borrowed time, here. This isn't _my_ life_,_ don't forget. I want to get this done and I want to leap out of here." He let his voice soften. "So you can have your Rae back, buddy."

Fraser's eyes went dark. "She's never far from my thoughts, Ray."

Ray grabbed Fraser's shoulder then, squeezed till he was sure he was leaving marks. "Yeah. I know."

Fraser searched his face for a moment, and then pulled him into a hug, his big warm arms heavy and comforting on Ray's skinny shoulders. Ray put his arms around Fraser's broad back and hugged hard, too. "Look, I'll be careful," he whispered against Fraser's neck. "I won't take unnecessary risks. I don't want to die any more than I want her to. But you'll be with me, and I got two fully armed uniforms on the premises at all times, and I'll stay alert, I promise."

"Thank you, Ray," Fraser said into his ear, his lips brushing Ray's hair, and hugged him harder.

"Besides," Ray added, "I'm not the one in this partnership who takes unnecessary risks and doesn't think it's important to call in backup."

"I know," Fraser said. "But I've improved. You've admitted—well, that is, Rae has admitted—that I'm more cautious than I used to be."

"Yeah. Witness the carry permit," Ray said. He burrowed deeper into Fraser's embrace. God, he could get used to this.

"I also have a cell phone," Fraser reminded him. "And I have police backup on speed dial."

"Okay. So we're good." Ray's voice was still hushed, like he was afraid if he spoke too loud, Fraser might realize who he was hugging, start to get uncomfortable, and let go.

Ray didn't want him to let go. But no matter how much he needed this, no matter how much looked like a chick at the moment, he was not going to _ask_ Fraser to hold him, because that was pathetic, and Ray was not pathetic. Tried not to be, anyway.

  
"You figure out yet how she talked you into the carry permit?" Ray said. "And the cell phone?"

"I don't really remember being talked into it," Fraser said. "I suppose it was that...well, she _married_ me, Ray."

"Yeah, so, it's because she's a woman, was that why?"

"No, it was...we're a family now," Fraser said, and Ray heard him swallow, felt the vibration of it.

A family. Yeah, Ray could get that. Fraser had a thing about family. Ray could work that angle, back in his own life, even though it was going to need some adaptation. He could figure something out even if Fraser turned out to be straight. Roommates. Brothers, even. That would mean a lot of cold showers for Ray, but if it got Fraser to carry, he'd try it.

"So the plan's a go?" Ray asked, leaning his head on Fraser's chest so he could hear the thrum of his heartbeat, strong and steady, like Fraser himself.

"All right. You'll give Dino to assume you might be interested in continuing to dance, and you'll also refrain from disabusing him of his erroneous notion that you are an androgyne."

Ray lifted his head. Made the rewind signal. "And the two-dollar words mean..."

"He thinks you are a hermaphrodite like Maddy and the others. You'll encourage him to continue to think that, and you'll also let him think you're considering his offer to go on the payroll as a regular performer."

"Right. And after a day or two, I suddenly give notice."

Fraser swallowed hard and nudged Ray away just far enough to look into his face. "Should you wear a wire?"

"For that conversation? Like I think he's gonna confess to the murders right there? Nah. The defense would get it thrown out of court, anyway. Judges almost never admit wire evidence in capital cases. Extortion, stealing and stuff, they love wires. But not murder, they don't go for that. And this is going to be a capital case, Fraser. This guy is going down for multiple counts of Murder One, and this time I am not going to weep any tears when they put the needle in him."

Fraser winced. "Just remember that you'll have to...well, I mean Rae will have to...to live with whatever you do. Ah, as her."

  
Fraser sounded like he was talking to a multiple-personality person, and Ray didn't want to think about that too closely, or he'd definitely end up in the hospital with the padded walls.

"Okay. Okay. But the prosecution isn't my job. Stella won't get the case, either, because...oh." He stopped, and felt his throat close a little. No matter how crazy about Fraser he got, he'd always have a real soft spot for Stella, it seemed. "Right. Not my ex-wife in this universe. Okay, so maybe she will. She's tough on crime, but she's not a monster. If Dino's sick...if he needs a hospital more than a jail, she won't go for blood."

Fraser's hand came up under Ray's chin, tilting it up. Ray jerked his head away. "What the hell?"

"Oh," Fraser said. He released Ray immediately and stood back. "Oh, dear. I'm terribly sorry."

"I ain't a little kid, Fraser. What was that, what were you doing?"

"I never realized. Knowing you're a man puts a lot of things in a completely different light."

"I'll say. Any other guy but you, you'd be on the floor right now, 'cause I'd have slugged you."

"I realize that. You'd have had every right." Fraser's face was kind of pink. "I never realized how that gesture must...well, you're right, it's really sort of infantilizing, isn't it? Unconscionable of me."

Ray waved a hand. "It's all right. Just don't do it again."

"I promise."

"Okay. And I promise to be careful with Dino."

"Okay," Fraser echoed.

If Ray'd known then that neither one of them was going to honor that promise, he would have pitched a colossal freakout right there.

  
But he didn't know that, so instead he got a glass of milk and a peanut butter cookie, and then he put on music—not too quiet; it was great living in a house instead of an apartment—and shadow-boxed around the living room for a while. Fraser was puttering around, checking on Dief and ironing his Stetson and neat-oiling his leather stuff, and doing whatever other weird Mountie KP stuff he had to do, and eventually Ray wound down like one of those old-fashioned toys, and he realized he'd better get ready for bed _now,_ or he was going to end up falling asleep on the carpet.

He brushed his teeth in record time, got out of his clothes even faster—didn't even bother trying to make the hamper shot, just left them on the floor right where he took them off—and burrowed under the covers. He never even turned off the light.

And he must have dozed, because it seemed like only moments before Fraser came in and started getting ready for bed. Fraser was taking care to be really quiet, and Ray didn't think he'd have gone to that elaborate trouble if Ray'd only just gotten into the bed. He squinted at the glowing numerals on the alarm clock, but couldn't quite make them out, and didn't feel like fumbling around on the night table for Rae's wire-rims.

He was hot, he felt weird, hot and achy and tired, but not sleepy, which sucked. His feet were tangled in the sheets.

Worse, he still wanted to punch something.

And then he heard Fraser tsk-tsking over the pile of clothes on the floor and picking them up and putting them into the hamper, and suddenly that pissed Ray off like anything.

Because why the hell couldn't Fraser leave well enough alone?

"What, doesn't Rae ever leave her stuff on the floor?" His voice echoed in the nighttime quiet. "You can't tell me she's that spic and span, not if she's me."

"You're awake."

"Obviously." He sounded pretty sarcastic, but at the moment he didn't care, because couldn't a guy catch a goddamn break? He'd done his bit for the city today, he'd done his best on the case, even though he hadn't solved it yet, he thought they were making solid progress, and when this was over he was going to ask for like a week off to recover his sanity, because, really, this gig was asking a hell of a lot, and—

And, Christ, what was he thinking? What if this didn't get _over? _What if he was stuck here as Rae?

The mere thought took his pissed-offedness and raised it to a whole new octave of yanked-chainage.

And he could still hear Fraser fiddling with his stuff.

"Look, Fraser, if I want to be a slob in my own home," he snapped, "then let me do it, and stay out of my face, because I—"

Damn.

Not his own home. Not his own body. Not even his own freaking universe.

Fraser straightened up and came over to him, standing at the side of the bed and looking down at him, his brow creased with concern. "I was simply tidying up, Ray. I know you're tired, so I thought I would do it for you. I didn't mean any...well, I truly didn't mean to..."

"Yeah. I know." Ray sighed hard and punched his pillow a couple of times. It didn't really help. "Okay, Fraser, look, I know you're trying. I'm trying, too. Tonight I just feel...I dunno. Like something's wrong with me. I can't put my finger on it. I danced tonight, you know, and dancing usually makes me feel better, but it wasn't enough."

He dropped his head back on the pillow and draped his arm over his eyes. "God, I feel like I want go the gym and hit something. I'm tired, I guess. Maybe not tired enough."

"The gym's not open at this hour on Saturday night," Fraser said, like he was trying to be helpful.

Helpful, earnest Fraser. Just like Ray's Fraser, the guy he thought of as the _real_ Fraser, except, One) that was stupid, because they were both the real Fraser, and B) that was stupider than stupid, because, like Superman and Clark Kent, they couldn't exactly ever be seen in the same room together. The Fraser that was standing here with Ray right now, he _was_ real. He was leaning his thigh against the bed, putting pressure on the mattress, which Ray could feel, which he didn't know how he could feel, but it was fucking annoying, was what it was.

Ray swatted at Fraser's leg with his free hand, making contact even though he didn't move his other arm off his eyes.

Fraser practically jumped back. Ray could feel that, too. He didn't know why he could feel so much, why he could smell Fraser standing there, or why Fraser smelled so obnoxiously good to him, and it wasn't just his leather-jacket smell or that herbal soap he used, it was _Fraser,_ and that made Ray want to jump out of his skin. Rae's skin. Whatever.

He kicked at the sheets again, irritated. They felt like they were chafing him, tonight. He was naked as usual, and he was feeling overheated, so finding something to wear for PJs wasn't the answer, but the sheets weren't the answer, either.

God, he wanted to hit something.

He moved his arm off his face.

Fraser was still standing there, looking...appalled or upset or something. Ray didn't know the right word for that look. He just knew he didn't like it. Fraser looked too pale, and that thing where he pushed his hearty breakfast around on his plate instead of eating it was clearly beginning to take its toll: Fraser's face was starting to appear kind of pinched. It wasn't a good look on him.

Ray reached out and made contact with Fraser's thigh, a lot gentler this time. "Come here."

Fraser sat down on the edge of the bed, kind of cautiously. "I want to help you, Ray," he said. "You're going to have to tell me how, because I don't know."

"Well what makes you think I do?" he shot back irritably.

Fraser reached over and took his hand, but didn't answer.

And Ray clutched Fraser's hand right back, like it was some kind of lifeline, like he could hang onto it long and tight enough to find his way back to the other Fraser, the one who was _his_ partner, who was pissier and took more stupid risks, and who wasn't happily married to a woman, but lived alone in his damn _office.... _

The Fraser who was probably, even now, wondering where the hell Ray was and if he was ever coming back.

The anger Ray'd had simmering all night boiled over, but instead of hauling off and yelling or punching something, he felt the heat well up in his eyes and squeeze out as two hot tears, and then two more, and he hated that, he hated that stupid sissy crap, and he wasn't a sissy...

...except maybe he was? Did the female body cause this, or was he just having a different reaction to everything because the only thing Ray could do besides cry was hit something? Because Fraser didn't deserve getting hit, so crying was really the better option.

Fraser's thumb was stroking over Ray's hand, over the really tight muscle at the base of his thumb, which was so tired from being in a fist for what seemed like hours.

And Fraser's hand on him did something to Ray, made his skin tingle and his breath catch, and a shiver went over his skin, both hot and cold at the same time. His nipples hardened, and when had his breasts gotten so sore? They'd been sore for days now, but the soreness had kind of crept up on him, so he hadn't really noticed it like he should have. When he did think about it, he'd just assumed the no-bra thing had finally caught up with him, and he'd tried to ignore it. But now he realized his breasts felt swollen, and his nipples were not only tight but really sore, and...Fraser's hand.

Fraser's hand was still on his, and it was Driving. Him. Crazy.

He opened his mouth to tell Fraser to stop, but the words he would've used just turned into kind of a grunt, and somehow he was pulling Fraser down towards him instead. Because he didn't want Fraser to stop. He needed Fraser right here, closer.

Touching him.

He needed Fraser to touch him.

He snagged Fraser's free hand in his and tugged, and Fraser was on top of him just like that, and whispering, "Ray, my Ray," in his ear.

And then it was like cold water had been poured over Ray's head, because even as Fraser was smoothing his hair back and kissing him, deeply, his tongue sliding into Ray's mouth, Ray was twigging to what Fraser'd just said, and he'd got it wrong. Fraser had said "My Rae."

Had to be.

Fraser was kissing _her,_ not Ray.

And that meant Ray had to stop it.

 


	10. Please Don't Stop

  
Even though his body—Rae's body—was aching for Fraser's touch, Ray had to make Fraser stop, because Fraser did not want to be doing this. Not to Ray.

He pushed at Fraser's chest, grunting a little because, _Ow—_as much as he'd wanted Fraser in his arms, the pressure on his breasts was really hurting now.

Fraser broke off the kiss and propped himself on his elbows, taking the pressure off. "What's the matter? Pain?"

"Yeah." He gestured. "They hurt. Don't know why." And he was about to add something about how Fraser didn't want to be doing stuff to _him,_ but Fraser just smiled a little smile and ducked his head down to look at Ray's breasts.

For one disconnected moment, Ray thought Fraser was, like, investigating the problem and was going to tell Ray why they hurt, but instead Fraser closed his lips gently around Ray's nipple and pressed his wet tongue there. Ray almost shot up out of the bed with the mingled pain and pleasure of the touch. It was just like the moment he'd come in, like that weird dream that wasn't a dream, and, God, he'd forgotten how _good_ that felt, Fraser's lips on his breast, Fraser's _tongue_ on him, licking soothingly over one nipple and then the other.

And oh, God, suddenly everything was clear:_ this_ was what he'd been needing. He needed Fraser's hands on him, he needed Fraser touching him in that place where all the electric sensations were leading to. And Ray was only human; he didn't think any more, he just pushed Fraser's hand in the right direction, and Fraser's hand obeyed, sliding down his belly to that achy place between his legs, touching him so softly there.

Ray was wet. He put his hand down there with Fraser's and felt the silky wetness with him, amazed. That was _him,_ that was his body, wet like that. Wet for Fraser. Wanting him. Wanting Fraser to put his cock in Ray and fuck him, like Fraser had almost done that first morning.

And here it was, the one thing that was good about being a chick: Benton Fraser could want to fuck him.

He needed Benton Fraser to fuck him. Now.

"In, in, put it in, need it in," went through his head like the refrain of a song he couldn't stop from playing in his head. He didn't even realize he'd whispered that audibly till he felt Fraser's thick finger sliding into him, and he sighed and felt his internal muscles clench around it, and it was so damn good, and he wanted so damn much _more_.

There was one part of him he needed to push against Fraser, so he angled his hips up; it was like that moment when he just had to rub his dick up against something or _die,_ and he realized, oh yeah, that was his clit. He slipped his hand around Fraser's wrist and directed him, helped him angle his hand better so he could plunge his finger into Ray and stroke his thumb over Ray's clit at the same time.

Ray dug his heels into the mattress, arched his whole body up into that insanely wonderful touch, and moaned, "Oh, God, do me, Ben, you got to do me right now."

"Ray! Yes." Fraser's eyes were closed, but he fumbled his jeans open one-handed, and Ray didn't even have to help much. He opened Fraser's shirt for him, really fast, since he'd been doing up the buttons on Rae's shirts—women's shirts, which had the buttons backwards—for three weeks now, and he had it down to a science. Fraser lifted up just enough to get free of his jeans and shorts, and Ray pushed the shirt off his shoulders and helped him pull his undershirt up and off, and then Fraser was naked. He rolled gently on top of Ray, supporting himself on his elbows, and lowered his head to kiss Ray again. It was good. It was so goddamned good.

Fraser's tongue was in his mouth; his hand crept back between Ray's legs to make real nice with Ray's girl junk, and Ray put his hand down and felt around till he got hold of Fraser's cock, which was hard already before he even touched it.

Fraser let out one muffled moan when Ray stroked his cock from base to tip, and then he grabbed Ray's hand and stopped him, and Ray obeyed immediately, knowing exactly what that was about. Too much friction, and everything would be over way too soon.

Fraser leaned down and kissed Ray's neck and murmured, "My dearest Ray," into it, and Ray shut his eyes and imprinted the words on his mind, spelled exactly that way, even though that could not have been the way Fraser—Ben—meant them. Because Ray was the only him in this entire universe, and there was no time but now, and he neededthis, goddamn it. And he knew if he were Rae, he would understand, because, _women went through this?_ He'd thought it was just guys who needed it so bad they wanted to jump out of their skin.

He promised himself silently that whatever she was getting up to in his body, even if it was something he'd feel weird about, like hooking up with Frannie or maybe even some stranger, girl or guy, he'd live with it and not spend a minute mad at Rae over it. Of course, considering that in his own body, Ray didn't actually manage to get lucky that often even when he tried, maybe she was just climbing the walls and jerking off a hell of a lot. But, whatever, even if he had to deal with some fallout, he would, and he promised himself he wouldn't blame her.

And he figured she would understand this, too, since she knew what it was like to be in her body, in bed with her Ben, half out of her mind in love with him. Which he just knew she was.

Because who wouldn't be?

He slid his fingertips into Fraser's silky hair. "Ben," he whispered. "I need you." It would've sounded dumb out loud. It would've sounded too weak, maybe pathetic, all those things that Stella'd hated. It would've sounded weird in his high, female voice. But whispered, it was him, it was Ray, and he was melting into Fraser's arms, he was breathing so hard, he was shivering from the kisses Fraser was pressing into the ticklish place between his neck and shoulder, and it was the truth.

"Yes, Ray. Anything."

"Inside me," Ray whispered. "I want you inside me."

"Yes, Ray." But Fraser slid down and nuzzled him between the legs first, putting his hot, wet tongue there,and there and _there, _at the root of him, where he needed it, and he couldn't help it, he let out a loud moan. Fraser responded, pressing his tongue harder right there and moving it faster, and Ray heard more unexpected, desperate sounds come out of his own mouth. He clutched at Fraser's hair. Fraser had to _do_ him, he was going to come, and he wanted Fraser inside him—

Fraser wrapped his hands around Ray's and squeezed gently, but he didn't let Ray pull him up. "Just a moment," Fraser breathed against Ray's belly, "just a moment more, let me finish...."

"But I'm, I'm gonna come—"

"Good! Sh, Ray, you like it that way; trust me," he thought he heard Fraser say, and yeah, those were the magic words for Ray. Always had been. He did trust Fraser. Any and all versions of Fraser.

So he let go of Fraser's hair and lay back, and Fraser shoved his finger in deeper, pulled out, came back with two, pushing them in tight and deep, and twisted them a bit. He swirled his tongue over Ray's clit again, so wet, so close, no gaps, no air there, no space between his tongue and Ray's clit at all...

...and climax broke over Ray like a wave, a warm ocean of sensation, pulling him free of everything that had bound him. He heard himself yelling almost like he did when he freaked out, only he didn't sound panicked, he sounded...

...there was no way to describe it, because it was like stepping outside himself. He was sobbing, he felt his pussy contracting, wave after wave of pleasure overtaking him, another throb each time he thought it was finally over, and Fraser's mouth—God! Fraser let up on him a little, just enough so that Ray didn't ever get to the too-sensitive point, and then Fraser put just his tongue out to touch Ray, and he licked so delicately over Ray's clit and his labia, or whatever you called them, and then, oh, God, that was Fraser's not-quite-smooth cheek, pressing Ray's belly, resting just a little...

And suddenly Ray felt so hollow in the center of the place that was throbbing, and he said "Now, Ben. Now, please, oh God please."

And Fraser lifted up over him and nudged his legs a little farther apart with his knees, and something big pressed Ray right just below the throbbing center of him, and then Fraser was inside him.

He was inside him. Fraser felt hugeand he was _inside Ray,_ and Ray realized only when it happened that he was still spasming, only now, Fraser's cock was there, filling him; his body was squeezing it, and pleasure shot through him again, hot and so, so sweet. Ray's body was clutching Fraser, holding him, and Fraser was conforming to his inner contours, or maybe that was Ray's inner contours conforming to Fraser. He didn't know.

Thiswas what Stella had felt when Ray was inside her.

And God, now he got why it'd been so hard for her to give this up, even just this part of it, this being filled....

He'd loved her so much. He'd wanted to be inside her as much as possible, and in the end, she hadn't wanted him there. Yeah, once in a while she'd still let him back into her bed, but then kick him out of her apartment in the morning, and Ray'd only put up with that because his own wishful thinking made him believe he might win her back that way.

But, no, she'd just wanted _this._

Which Ray could understand.

Soon after Fraser showed up in his life, Ray'd finally realized that Stella wasn't ever coming back, that her fucking him once in a while had just been out of habit, which was pretty damn pathetic. She'd wanted her freedom, she said. Wanted other things.

Well, he wasn't Stella.

He was Ray, or maybe Rae, or somehow both. And at the moment, he had Benton Fraser inside him, and he never, ever wanted Ben to leave.

Then Ben began to thrust.

It was like nothing Ray'd ever felt before. He'd put his finger up his own ass while jerking off once, to see what it felt like, but this wasn't anything like that. That had hurt a little, and then it had been interesting, but awkward, too; his forearm didn't want to bend that way, for one thing, and for another, it took a lot of concentration to stay relaxed enough to do anything that felt good, and ultimately he gave up and kind of filed it in a box marked "someday."

It hadn't been anything like this. This was..._beautiful._ He was so wet and soft and there was just enough room for Fraser to move inside him, but not so much that he couldn't feel every inch of Fraser's cock stroking inside him.

Ben Fraser was inside him.

There was something really, really right about that.

Ben was inside him, making love to him, and Ray could feel him, Ben's naked cock inside him. Nobody had said anything about a condom. Ray probably should have; he hadn't been taking any pills, that was for sure, and Fraser hadn't said anything to him at all about birth control the entire time he'd been here. But neither of them had remembered, probably because they'd never expected to be doing this in the first place.

But they were. Maybe that was because Ray had finally pushed Fraser off his nut and Fraser really did think he was Rae after all.

And Ray couldn't say for sure that he wasn't, because, really, who ever heard of life-entity-whatsits outside of science fiction? It probably wasn't anything real, but only the weirdest dream of his life. Or maybe the person who was off his nut was really Ray after all.

"I'm not Rae," he started to say, but he couldn't finish, because he suddenly didn't seem to have the breath for it. It was catching in his chest and coming out like heavy, dry sobs. He felt like crying, felt like he _was_ crying, only he didn't shed any tears.

And Fraser was holding him, pressing close, chest to chest. Fraser was sliding his cock into him, a firm, deep rhythm that Ray's body knew how to move with, and he did, he slid his legs up easily around Fraser's hips, then higher, and wrapped them around Fraser's waist. It was easy: Ray was even more flexible than usual in this body, and he and Ben fit together so incredibly well.

Nothing that felt this perfect could possibly be wrong.

"You are," Fraser was gasping into his ear. "You are Ray."

And Ray had no idea how Fraser was spelling that in his head, but the fact was, he was the only Ray that was _here,_ and Fraser—Ben—needed him right now.

Maybe just as much as he needed Ben.

He tightened his legs around Fraser and hung on as Fraser thrust harder and faster, and it was so good. He remembered something Stella used to do that drove him crazy in the good way, so he tried it for Ben, because he wanted to make it that good for Ben. He concentrated till he found the right muscles, the internal ones that were surrounding Ben, and he tightened them, and Ben lowered his head against Ray's cheek and moaned low in his throat. And Ray answered him, because apparently that move still had the power to drive him crazy, too, even from the other side of it.

It made him _feel_ Fraser in him, made him throb suddenly at the place where Ben was joined to him. He felt all his muscles tighten up, and the pleasure at the hot core of him spilled over again, he was coming _again,_ spasming hard around Fraser's cock, and Fraser let out a startled gasp, and then he went still, too, and heat flooded Ray from inside.

After a minute, Ray could feel the pulses from Ben, too, even though they were gentler than the intense spasms of his own body. Fraser was breathing really, really hard, and Ray could feel his heart pounding, could feel both their heartbeats keeping the same rhythm. Sweat trickled from Ben's hairline onto Ray's shoulder, tickling.

"Yeah, Ben," he said against Fraser's ear, and kissed it. "I'm Ray. Whoever that is. And I love you."

"And I you."

Afterwards, Ray felt a hell of a lot better. His pent-up energy was no longer buzzing around inside him like a live wire. He eased his arms and legs from around Fraser and sank back on the pillow and just breathed.

Fraser rolled off him gently and lay back on the other pillow, catching his breath, too, and Ray was suddenly cold all over, even starting to shiver a little.

Fraser opened one eye and twitched the covers up over Ray, but didn't put any on himself. He was still dripping sweat, looking flushed, but ridiculously happy.

"My God, Ray."

"Yeah. You can say that again."

Fraser started to open his mouth, but Ray held up a finger, weakly. "But don't."

"Understood."

They were quiet awhile, till Ray finally got up the guts to say, "I don't know what was wrong with me. I'm sor—"

Fraser stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Don't. It was my doing as well."

"I'm not her, Fraser." He hated saying it, but he had to.

"All right," Fraser said, sounding like he was waiting for a punch line. Or maybe for the other shoe to drop.

"I'm really not. I'm going to leave and go back to my own life, my own body, and she'll be back here with you. I hope."

"Me, too."

"I don't want you to feel guilty."

"I think," Fraser said, real quietly, "that she'll understand. She knows what it's like."

"Huh. With the sore tits and everything?" And the needing to jump Ben's bones so bad she could _die? _he added in his head.

Fraser nodded. "It's hormones, Ray."

"What's that supposed to mean? Stella never got like this."

"Well, everyone's different. Rae goes through something like this every month."

"You're saying I got PMS?" Ray's voice squeaked a little on the last word.

"So you understand."

Ray snorted. "No. I do not fucking understand, Fraser. I am a guy. I'm not supposed to understand this shit."

"Well, maybe you are."

"What, you're saying that's the reason I'm here?"

"Possibly."

"No way. Guys get lectured by their girlfriends and they get sensitivity training, and they buy books on Mars and Venus, but they do not switch universes just to have the fun of PMS for a month." He lifted a hand and rubbed gently at his sore tits. "Hell of a lot easier being the guy."

"Yes." Fraser reached over and took Ray's hand. "If I could do this for you Ray, if I could take your place, I would in an instant."

Ray could hear in his voice that he meant it. "Aw, Frase. Ben." He wasn't even really Rae, or really this Fraser's partner, but at the moment he sure felt like he was. This was _Fraser_ in every way that counted, here and now.

Ray reached for him. Slid over on top of him, sticky and messy as they both were, and kissed him like he was drowning.

Maybe he was.

He woke up with his head under the pillow. The rest of him did not bear contemplating. "I'm dying. I'm gonna die."

"Ray, don't be silly." Fraser was waking up next to him, looking _way_ too chipper for a guy whose partner was dying in the bed next to him.

Ray wanted to hit him. "Really, Fraser. I'm hemorrhaging."

"What? Where?"

"Here."

He rolled half over. Pointed. He had tissues stuffed between his legs, so it wasn't like Fraser could really see, but Ray was sure he got the idea. He pointed at his belly. "It hurts. It's all twisty. I feel like I'm being wrung out like a wet towel, and then when I'm wrung dry, I get wrung some more. Ow."

"Oh." Fraser rubbed his eyebrow. "Ray. That's not. You're not dying."

"How do you know? You're not feeling this."

"Ray. It's just your, er, Rae's...well, that is to say. You're menstruating."

"Okay, I figured that out. Can't you let a guy complain?"

"It's perfectly normal. It means you're in good health, not bad."

"Hah! Tell that to my belly! And my head, and my sore tits! And every fucking thing else! I got stuff that's hurting right now that I don't even know what to call it. Girl parts. They hurt. They all hurt."

"I—I'm sorry," Fraser said, sounding at a loss.

"Well you should be! This ain't right. All girls gotta go through this? I don't get this. I do not get this."

"I should think you'd be aware...you were married yourself. No doubt your wife went through this every month."

"No doubt." Ray snorted. "Yeah. And I'd probably have been a little more sympathetic if I'd known what it felt like. Christ, chicks have to put up with this shit? This sucks!"

"Ray."

"Well, it does!"

Fraser sighed. "All right. Rae used to say the same thing."

"She punch you?"

Fraser rubbed his eyebrow briefly. "Well, er, no, but she did threaten to once or twice."

"Well, _I_ might."

"I appreciate the warning."

Ray groaned and punched the pillow instead.

"Would you like me to call Lieutenant Welsh and tell him you're, er, indisposed?"

"I thought you didn't approve of inventing the flu."

"I don't, Ray, but I imagine he'd rather not be subjected to the details of your, er, feminine matters."

Ray groaned some more, low in his throat so it sounded almost like his own voice. "Feminine matters. Something is wrong with the universe, Fraser, that a guy like me has _feminine matters._ It's not right."

"I agree," Fraser said, frowning.

"But what really yanks my chain is to hear how much you want to protect Welsh's sensitive ears from even _hearing_ about it when I'm going through _this._ Do you not even _care,_ Fraser?"

"Of course I care, Ray."

Ray groaned again. "Oh, God, why does it have to be like this? This is good health? This isn't right! Good health isn't supposed to hurt this much."

"Perhaps it's a particularly bad month?" Fraser said.

"No kidding!" Ray yelled. "It is a terrible month! It is the worst month of my life, Fraser. I woke up as a woman and I've been living this nightmare ever since, and now my own body—at least, the one I got at the moment—is trying to kill me."

"I'm sure it's not," Fraser said. "Has there been a lot of blood—er, menstrual fluid?"

"Did I not say the word 'hemorrhaging'? Did I not say that?" Ray pressed his hands into his belly where it hurt the most. Jesus, his low back hurt, too. Hurt even more, in fact.

"Have you tried using any of Rae's, er...sanitary products?"

"What makes you think I would know the first thing about feminine sanitary whatsits?"

"Oh. Well. I was just thinking that we'll need a way to determine whether the flow seems excessive," Fraser said. He peered more closely at Ray's jerry-rigging. "I doubt the facial tissues will be sufficient in the long run."

"Do not!" Ray said. "Do not look down there. I do not want to look down there. I'm the one who's going through this, and I do not want to see it. Because every time I do, I gotta remember I am all wrong down there. I got a fucking _pussy, _Fraser, and I was not born with one of those."

Fraser blinked at him like he'd said something really unexpected.

"What, she don't call it that?"

"Well, er. No."

"Don't tell me she says 'vagina,' because that is a Fraser word, that is not a Ray word."

"She uses the term, er..." Fraser cleared his throat. "Well, I—I can't...I don't exactly use..."

Fraser's embarrassment was somehow interesting enough to get Ray's attention despite the pain. He started in surprise. "She use the C word?" he said, suddenly feeling the urge to laugh.

"Well, ah, she says it's..."

Ray did laugh, then. Well, it was closer to a snort, but under the circumstances, you had to give a guy credit for trying. "Cunt," he said. "Whaddya know."

Fraser's ears actually went red.

Ray laughed harder.

Fraser replied huffily, "Well, I'm glad _you_ find that word easy to say, because..."

Ray waved him to silence. "Nah, I don't, actually. I just wanted to see your reaction. No, I—I got trained early on that one. Stella would never have put up with that word coming out of my mouth. I would've had to camp out on the couch for six months. I may not have the most couth of any guy in the city, but I respect women, Fraser."

"I know you do, Ray. It's quite obvious."

"Yeah, well. I respect them a hell of a lot _more_, now." He still had his hands wrapped around his belly.

"Rae says it's not a disrespectful word when she uses it. She says it's actually better than, er, other terms that seem rather silly. And I've looked it up, and it comes from the Latin root for..."

Ray cut him off. "I don't wanna know. The important thing here is, whatever you call it, I got one at the moment, and it hurts."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, you should be."

"Well, I am. I'm not responsible for the situation, as far as I know. But I'm sorry." Fraser's eyes had gone all dark and haunted again.

Ray would have kicked himself, except he didn't think he could have tolerated any more pain at the moment, not even a twinge. He pointed at his belly. "What's up here that's hurting so much?"

"Oh. Well, I expect that's your uterus. Er, your womb."

That knocked Ray for a loop. He leaned his head back on the pillow and took some big breaths, because, Jesus: he had a womb.

He didn't have his dick, his muscles, or his deeper voice. He wasn't going to shake any bad guys with the threat of headkicking, though his crazy act and his gun probably still had a fair chance of at least worrying them a little.

But he did have the one thing he'd always envied Stella for—well, aside from her brains and her way with words. And to be accurate, it wasn't her actual womb he'd envied. But he'd envied her the choice. To be the one to decide about kids.

In this body, kids or no kids would be his choice.

He pushed his hand down over the place in his belly where he felt the wringing sensations. There, he thought. Womb. That could carry a baby.

He looked back up at Fraser, speechless. And it wasn't till Fraser's face changed that Ray realized his own face was wet.

"Is the pain worse?" Fraser said, looking really concerned.

Ray shook his head. "No. I just..." He scrubbed the back of his hand over his eyes real quick. "It just hit me. I've always wanted kids."

"But you didn't choose to have them?"

"It wasn't only my decision. Stella had the veto."

"Oh. Yes, of course."

"Maybe she was right."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I probably wouldn't have been such a good father. I _want_ kids, but I'm not sure I relate to them as anything more than, you know, a slightly bigger kid. I'm not that mature."

"Nonsense. You'd make a wonderful parent, Ray."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I know you. Because you're my partner, my friend, and my...er..."

Ray smiled sheepishly. "Nah, go on. Your teeth are safe. I'm over it."

"All right. My wife, or a reasonable facsimile."

That got a little chuckle out of Ray. "I'll cop to the facsimile."

So Ray's mood was better, and Fraser wasn't looking haunted any more; he was simply looking concerned, like he wanted to help Ray through this, and that...well, it helped. Fraser rubbed his belly with gentle fingers until the wringing feeling eased up a little, and he rubbed his low back until the spasms eased up there, too, and then Ray asked him what Rae did for the pain.

Fraser blushed and hesitated, but finally said that she'd given him to understand that exercise usually helped, but when she was in this much pain, the best cure was orgasm.

Ray blinked at him. "You putting me on?"

But he really didn't need Fraser to answer that, because the color rising in Fraser's face gave him away. Fraser started to come out with some long-winded thing about endorphins and whatsits, but Ray stopped him and said, "Kiss me."

Fraser only hesitated a moment this time.

He pulled Ray into his arms and kissed him, and after a few minutes of that, he snaked his hand down Ray's belly and stroked it, caressed his mound, and then touched his clit. It didn't take long before Ray was gasping into Fraser's mouth and coming, feeling warmth and pleasure spread out over his body, centered between his legs, but not contained there. And then he realized, as he lay back and wallowed in the post-orgasmic calm, that he didn't even feel the cramps any more.

When he'd rested a few minutes, he reached for Fraser to return the favor, but Fraser said, "That's not necessary, Ray, just rest."

Ray gave him the fisheye, because that was nuts: Fraser was a guy, and turning down sex was just _dumb._

So he reached for him again, and this time Fraser let himself be caught, and Ray was not one bit surprised to find Fraser already hard and ready for his touch. He gripped him with just the right amount of pressure—well, the way _he_ liked it, and Fraser seemed to like it just fine—and he worked Fraser's cock expertly, and after only about three minutes of that, Fraser let out a pleasure-filled groan and came all over the place.

Ray didn't even bother trying to wipe anything up, because what with his "feminine matters" and all the sex, the sheets were probably already a total loss. He just kissed Fraser some more and then snuggled up next to him like a—he had to admit it, like a _girl—_and they both started to doze.

And as he drifted off, he thought that as much as he wanted his own body and his own life back—and he did, he wanted it as much as he wanted his next breath—he thought he was going to find it really hard to leave this new life, the people he'd known here, and most of all this Fraser.

His husband.

 


	11. The Only Way to Dance

  
On Monday, the club's day off, Maddy invited everybody to the apartment for brunch as a welcome for Rachelle and also a way to sketch out the game plan for the following week's shows.

Fraser couldn't go, because the Inspector had him doing some dumb thing at Millennium Park. Ray'd gone fuzzy on the details, but it sounded like she'd ordered Fraser to stand there looking pretty in his red uniform and hand out leaflets about the Queen's birthday or maybe that booklet about how to become a Canadian in ten easy steps. (The country was mind-bogglingly huge, but only had about thirty million citizens, so Ray figured they needed all the recruits they could get. He didn't tell Fraser, but he was all for it, because he figured there was a critical mass to getting good pizza and other takeout up in the Great White North, and the more transplanted Chicagoans they talked into moving there, the sooner the pizzerias would open.)

Still, it was a waste of Fraser's time and police-type skills, if you asked Ray. He wouldn't put it past Thatcher, and it pissed him off, but Ray figured he could pull brunch duty by himself.

Ray still had the girls' apartment under 24-hour surveillance—thank heaven for Welsh, he thought, not for the first time, because Welsh believed the serial murders of three hermaphrodite drag queens were every bit as serious as the murders of three Gold Coast prom queens would have been. Not every lieu would have yanked a team of uniforms off regular duty for a gig like this.

When Ray arrived, he found Miller outside the door, standing like a statue, like polished black marble in starched-perfect blues, right down to the creases in the front of his pants legs. If Ray hadn't known Miller was an ex-Marine, he'd have thought he was a former Mountie, his uniform was that perfect. Miller also had shoulders like a linebacker and a perfect V-shaped torso, like he had just walked out of a muscle mag, and Ray always felt kind of inadequate around guys like that.

But then Miller _smiled_ at him, just a little hint of a smile, and actually tipped his cap, and Ray remembered: Oh, yeah. Miller was seeing _Rae. _No point in feeling inadequate, then, because Ray wasn't even playing in the same stadium these days.

He squared his skinny shoulders and nodded a hello to Miller, who actually smiled _again_, and said "Afternoon, Detective" real politely. Ray reminded himself not to get used to it. When Ray was back in his own body, no doubt Miller would go back to being not particularly impressed by Ray and not particularly hiding it. Still, it was nice while it lasted.

And having the uniforms here made Ray breathe a little easier even though Dino was going to be there and today was the day that Ray was going to put his plan into action.

Miller said Dino had come in empty-handed, but he'd frisked him anyway, and Beaufort was up in the apartment now watching everyone like a hawk.

Ray thanked him and went up. He met Beaufort's eyes inside the door, and wow, from Ray's new vantage point in Rae's form, the guy was built like a freaking _fortress._ If Miller was a linebacker, this guy was an offensive lineman. Which, if Ray was in his own body, he'd really feel inadequate, because compared to them, Ray would be, well, not even a quarterback, he had to admit. He'd be, like, the towel boy or the guy who brought the Gatorade.

Today, however, he was built more like a cheerleader, and he saw Beaufort responding to that, smiling in a way that wasn't inappropriate or offensive, but that bothered Ray just the same. He knew the guy in his own 27th, and Beaufort wouldn't be caught dead smiling at the male Ray like that. The uniforms smiled at him now, Ray thought, not because he was nice, but because he was _cute._ If he thought about it, he was going to start doing a slow burn. He didn't want to be fucking _cute._

Beaufort didn't say anything, but the all-clear was easy enough to read on his face, so Ray nodded back and went into the apartment's little living/dining area.

Maddy welcomed Ray with a hug, making him blush again, Angelique squeezed his hand, and Rachelle waved from over by the window and said, "Hi, Rae," and then Angelique steered him over to some coffee and bagels and stuff. Maddy poured him a perfect, steaming cup of coffee and handed it to him. He looked around for the sugar, but before he even found it, she laughed and produced a little box of Smarties, and jeez, he had people humoring him on the Smarties thing in two universes by now.

He laughed too, and relaxed a little. It would've been comfortable and easy if Dino hadn't been there already, his bulky form all sunk into the corner of the ratty couch, looking up defiantly. "How long are we gonna have to put up with the Secret Service here," he griped, flicking a nervous glance at Beaufort, then looking away.

"Oh, probably not too long," Ray said in the most exaggeratedly casual voice he could manage and still sound, well, casual. "We still got an investigation going on here, but I'm sure it'll wrap up soon."

"Hush, Dino," Maddy said, defending the CPD's honor. "I invited Danny up because he's cute. The guard-duty thing was just an excuse."

"I'm supposed to believe that?" Dino groused.

"Yup," Maddy said, pouring another cup of coffee and bringing it over to Beaufort. "Cream and sugar?"

Beaufort glanced at Ray, maybe looking for permission, and Ray managed to tell him "take the coffee" without moving his head or saying anything out loud, and Beaufort relaxed a little and accepted it black. Maddy beamed at him, and then came over to where Ray was slouching down on the sofa with a good two feet between him and Dino.

"See, Dino," Maddy said, "it's okay to enjoy life a bit. Maybe even a lot," she added, and winked at Ray.

He blushed all over again, and tried not to think about the previous weekend. He still had cramps, though not as bad as the first day, and sending even a thought below his belt made them flare up again.

"Sure," Dino said in a flat tone of voice that said he had no clue what she was talking about. "I just don't see why we gotta have cops underfoot, or why the one downstairs made me turn out my pockets like I'm some common thief. Like he don't know I own this place."

"Oh, that," Ray said, working the offhanded, dumb-cop tone for all he was worth. "Yeah, I'm afraid Miller down there takes his job way too seriously. The guy doesn't know how to lighten up. Listen, about the pockets thing. Sorry about that. I think when my lieu gave these guys their marching orders, he told them not to let anybody in or out of the apartment except the girls that live here. I told him you were coming to brunch today, but Miller's kind of a tight-ass." Ray shrugged, his hands spread, and glanced over at Beaufort, hoping he could read in Ray's eyes the instruction to play along.

"It's my place," Dino said, his fleshy mouth settling into the hardest line it could manage. "It ain't right."

"That's a fact," Ray said, and if he and Dino were talking about two completely different things, Dino wasn't any the wiser.

Maddy cleared her throat and settled down gracefully on the couch between Dino and Ray. "So, look, we've got to go over the schedule for the week."

Dino frowned at her. "What's wrong with the same schedule as last week?"

"Rachelle didn't start till Saturday, for one thing," she said smoothly. "For another thing, we still have Rae, right?"

Ray nodded, trying not to let his nerves show, because here it was, this was his opening. "Yeah," he said to Dino. "I like dancing. I could, um...continue for a while, if you want. Like you said."

Dino leaned forward. "Put you on the payroll?" he said. "And on the marquee?"

Ray shrugged. "Yeah, okay. Maybe for a little while."

"Oh, you'll stay," Dino said, and he smiled. It wasn't a happy kind of smile, but a smug one, a smile that said Dino had Ray's number, he knew what Ray was, and he was going to get one up on him sooner or later.

Or like he was going to _get_ him sooner or later. Yeah, that was what bothered Ray about it: It was a proprietary smile.

Ray had to look away.

Maddy, between them on the sofa, seemed to sense Ray's discomfort.

"Oh, stop, Dino. Four girls is good, but you can't work us to the bone." She stuck out a long-fingered hand and inspected her nails—violet polish, perfect as usual. "What if somebody gets the flu? I keep telling you, you gotta branch out a little. Get some regular drag queens in here. Boys, if you know what I'm saying. There's a guy I know on the North Side who looks just like RuPaul. Gorgeous. I could talk to him."

"No!" Dino said, leaning forward, his eyes blinking hard. "Not a regular _boy_. Not in the principal cast."

"Oh, come on, we've had boys in here before. I don't know what you're worried about." She pouted theatrically. It was a total snow job, Ray could see that, though Dino apparently couldn't. She'd expertly deflected Dino's attention from Ray. Ray squeezed her hand in thanks, and got up to see if there was another half of a bagel lying around unclaimed.

  
After an hour or so of making small talk and listening to Dino on the sly the whole time, but not learning anything that sounded _germane_ to the case, Ray was tired of the blither and ready to leave.

He'd accomplished his task for the day, and he wanted to do laundry and get ready for the week ahead, but most of all he wanted to touch base with Fraser. Still, he stuck around as long as Dino was still there. No way was he leaving the girls alone with that creep, even with Beaufort standing there looking like he could personally stop a runaway freight train, let alone one pudgy guy with too many rings.

Ray was getting his fourth cup of coffee, seriously testing the limits of his sturdy female bladder, when Dino finally made noises about leaving. Before Dino left, though, he came over to Ray and said, "I knew you'd see it."  
   
Ray blinked. "See what?"

"You're family."

"What do you mean?"

"All the girls." Dino gestured, a wide circle, indicating more than just the group in the apartment. "All Family." He said it with a capital F, waving a fat hand for further emphasis. "All my girls."

Which explained the name of the club.

"Even the ones that ain't with us no more?" Ray said meaningfully.

"Sure," Dino said after a pause. "Once Family, always Family. A family's gotta stick together."

"Well, jeez, Dino," Ray said, trying for his best aw-shucks, dumb-cop tone. "What's your problem with the uniforms, then?" He was not even getting into the pimping stuff, because, first of all, that business was on hold, and second of all, both Maddy and Angelique swore up and down they were doing it out of choice, and Dino was just getting an agent's cut, nothing like an exploitative pimp at all. "They're only here for the girls' protection. Don't you want to protect your Family?"

"Don't need 'em," Dino said dismissively.

"What about Charla?" Ray said, mentally reminding himself not to push.

"Don't talk about Charla."

"Why not?"

Dino actually looked sad. "She shouldn't have tried to leave me. That was a bad choice. She belongs here, with her Family."

"What, a family can't let a kid get an education? Don't sound like a loving family to me."

"Not if the kids don't come back," Dino said. "Family always comes back."

He glanced over towards the table, and Ray followed his gaze: Rachelle was sitting on one of the rickety chairs, talking animatedly with Angelique, who was leaning over her, the red curtain of her hair hanging down, hiding her face from Ray.

"Rachelle came back," Dino said. "She had to. She's Family." He turned back to Ray. "You think you're a cop. Girl cop. But face it; you're not _really_ a girl, are you?"

"Well...uh," Ray said. "There's, you know, some question about that." He hoped like hell that Beaufort couldn't hear him, because if it got back to the District, Rae'd never live it down.

"I know," Dino said. "I can always tell. It's no accident you're here. You're Family."

A shiver crawled slowly up Ray's back.

Because the one thing he did know about why he was here...was that he didn't know why he was here.

But he didn't think it was an accident, either.

And if he didn't figure out the reason, maybe he'd be bound to this universe the way Charla had been bound to the club.

On the other hand, he'd always had kind of an overactive imagination. Maybe he was letting it run away with him again.

"I'll give that some thought," he told Dino, and watched the guy's retreating back like a hawk, all the way out.

  
Ray went straight home and almost straight into Fraser's arms the minute he got in the door.

Fraser clearly was fine with that; he opened his arms and made like he was going to pull Ray right in, maybe never let him go.

But then Ray remembered he wasn't a real chick, and this looked seriously wussy (he'd sworn to himself he was never going to use the term "pussy" to mean weak or wimpy, not ever again).

He knew his female body wasn't the reason why he needed Fraser's arms around him.

It was a damn convenient excuse, though.

What was really fucked up here was people's judgments, people's expectations.

Not that what other people thought should have any damn thing to do with _Ray,_ just, he'd had these ideas drilled into him, and it was gonna take some work to pry them loose. What, did people think women needed hugs _more _just because it was somehow more okay for them to actually get them? Even to ask for them?

Or maybe it was the body, and having his period was doing this to him.

Yeah, probably not.

Fraser was looking at him, a faint wrinkle starting to etch itself between his eyebrows.

Ray gave in and slid into Fraser's arms like he'd done it all his life.

"Sorry, I was, uh..."

"Woolgathering?"

"Huh? What does that even mean?"

Fraser opened his mouth, no doubt to give Ray the entire encyclopedia entry on the history of wool, back to, like, the first shepherd, but Ray stopped him. "Never mind. I wasn't lost in thought, if that's what you mean. I was trying to wrap my brain around coming home from a work thing and getting hugs from my partner. Kind of a new experience for me."

"I imagine it would be."

"Yeah. But a good one."

"I'm glad."

"Oh, hey. I just realized you're home early. The park go okay?"

Fraser sighed. "Reasonably, if you don't count the fact that Diefenbaker knocked over a lemonade stand, a macramé booth, and...well, it's probably best if we don't discuss the clown on stilts."

"Jeez. I think I'm glad I missed it."

"He's expected to make a full recovery," Fraser said.

"So, that why you're home early?"

"The Inspector felt that the interests of Canada would best be preserved by a strategic retreat. She gave me the rest of the day off."

"Sounds good."

"It's not an honor, Ray."

"Clown's suing, huh?"

"Possibly."

"Whoa. And I thought I had a weird afternoon." Ray wrapped his arms tightly around Fraser's sturdy ribcage. He could feel the breath going in and out of Fraser's lungs, steady as surf on a shore.

"Did you learn anything?"

"Dino did it. I've never been more sure."

"Did you find evidence?"

"No."

"A hunch, then?"

"When they're this strong, my hunches are never wrong, Fraser."

"Rae said much the same thing about this case," Fraser said. "And with far less to go on."

"So you believe me."

Fraser took Ray's shoulders in his hands and pushed him back just far enough to look him square in the eye. "Of course I believe you, Ray. Not because Rae said the same thing. I know you now, too. You and she, you are..."

"We're not the same."

"No, but you're both part of a greater consciousness that_ is_ the same."

Ray blinked. "Kind of hard to wrap my brain around that idea, but I'll go with you on it."

"Yes. You always do. That's how I know it's you."

Yeah, that didn't make any sense, but Ray got it anyway. Ben Fraser_ trusted_ him. Always had.

It was probably the major reason Ray was getting through this thing. One step at a time, he reminded himself. One foot in front of the other, stay on the beat and keep moving.

Even if you didn't get to choose the music it was the only way to dance.

  
Tuesday morning, Frannie phoned with the news that the autopsy results were all back, and Ray and Fraser went in to the station.

They coaxed Mort up out of his catacombs again—was that magic or something?

Ray wanted to write the date down, frame it, and stick it on the wall, but Fraser said it wasn't that unusual. Apparently Mort was sweet on Rae, at least in some kind of fatherly, non-threatening way that didn't bother Fraser a bit and that Rae tolerated, because she was a much nicer person than Ray and easier to get along with. Well, Fraser didn't say that last thing, but Ray was getting pretty good at figuring out stuff about Rae by how people who were not Fraser reacted to him. Her. To Ray in Rae's form.

Yeah, it was still pretty confusing.

Whatever, Mort sure seemed very understanding about Ray's squeamishness when he was Rae. Apparently, women were allowed to be more squeamish, even if they were detectives first grade in Major Crimes—and since when was that fair?

But Ray figured he should probably not raise the issue with any female detectives when he was himself again, because, really, it sucked worse having your tits stared at by some dumb uniform when you were trying to conduct an investigation, and that happened a hell of a lot more often than Ray getting dissed for being a wuss around corpses.

Anyway, Mort brought his findings up to the bullpen and they spread the contents of the file out on a conference table in Interrogation Room 1, and went over everything.

Bottom line, Mort said, he didn't know exactly what had killed Charla, but there were traces of sedatives found in her system, and they definitely shouldn't have been there. Her medical records showed she'd been diagnosed with low blood pressure and cautioned against taking anything that could lower it further.

Ray phoned Maddy and confirmed it: apparently all the girls knew that Charla never drank alcohol or took downers, and they knew why...and so did Dino. "That was why we usually had tea," Maddy said. "The caffeine was good for her, and she liked it. She always took it with a lot of sugar."

Ray clicked his phone off, shaking his head, and went back to the table where Fraser and Mort were poring over pages of numbers and stuff. He slouched into a chair and whacked himself in the forehead with the flat of his hand a couple of times.

"Problem, Detective?" Mort asked.

"Nah, you were right. She knew, and the roommates say she never touched downers of any kind. I just don't know how I missed asking the right questions."

"Possibly you had a lot on your mind," Fraser said gently.

"No excuse, Fraser. There's still a killer out there."

"We'll get him, Ray."

At least he hadn't killed again on Ray's watch. Not yet.

"Yeah, well, we've got to connect him with the sedatives. What were they?" he asked Mort.

"Probably pulverized sleeping tablets. We only found a trace, but for her, a small amount could have been sufficient, we don't know.

"So, what happened, her heart stopped?"

Mort nodded. "And she showed signs of hypoxia—insufficient oxygen. I'm sorry, Detective. Sometimes it's really very hard to tell which happened first. Did the heart slowing and stopping cause the insufficient oxygen or vice versa? We may never know."

"So was there any sleeping powder found in the tea?"

Mort shook his head. "It would have been helpful to test the teacup the victim drank out of, but it wasn't recovered by the crime-scene specialists. Apparently someone had done the dishes the night before."

Maddy, Ray thought. She was such a neatnik, she wouldn't have let dishes sit overnight.

He sighed and turned to Mort. "We got any reason to hang on to the body?"

"No need," Mort said. "I already released it for burial, and the family claimed it."

"What family? I thought she didn't have any."

Mort rifled through his papers and pushed one over. Ray read it fast. Charla's mortal remains had been claimed by her brother.

One Fiorellino "Dino" LaGuardia, club owner and impresario.

Her _brother?_ No fucking way.

Ray stuck his head out into the hallway and bellowed for Frannie so loud it almost sounded like his real voice. There was no response, of course—he'd had to get used to that in the past three weeks. She either really, really didn't like Rae, or she was still stuck on Fraser and just couldn't see past that. Ray didn't know, but it wasn't his problem, now or probably ever.

"Fraser?" he pleaded tiredly.

"I'll get her, Ray."

She followed Fraser into the interrogation room readily enough, Ray noticed, annoyed.

He also noticed Fraser giving him a heavy-duty reproachful look for the bellowing, and maybe it was also a warning to not come down too hard on Frannie. Reminding himself yet again that if he broke anything in this universe, Rae was going to have to pick up the pieces, Ray questioned Frannie carefully. He thought he talked to her a lot more nicely than she deserved, considering the level of unhelpfulness she'd sunk to in the last three weeks, but he got through it by pretending she was _his_ fake sister Frannie, who was ditzy, but kind of sweet, and after giving him a few really weird, confused looks, she started to talk.

Dino had had all the right paperwork. So nobody'd questioned it.

"But she didn't look anything like him!" Ray said, trying not to shout in frustration, or pull out any of Rae's hair.

Frannie blinked at him. "Well, it's not like I ever talked to her, or got a good look at the photos. She was _dead_ when they brought her in, Rae."

Frannie had a point.

"She was five-eleven and skinny," Ray said, more quietly. "Dino's, like, five foot two in both directions." Ray reinforced his point with hand gestures, sketching the two figures in the air.

"Yeah, that's the guy." Frannie said. "And he had a real tall sister?"

"That's what I'm thinking somebody should have questioned," Ray said, heroically keeping a lid on his temper.

Frannie shrugged. "I got a real tall brother."

"Yeah, but he's the _brother,"_ Ray said. He put his head down in his hands. "Never mind. I can understand if the guy had the right paperwork."

"Thank you, Detective," Frannie said, with a fair amount of snark in her tone.

"What I don't understand is that someone claimed the body of my vic, said claimant is my prime suspect, and nobody thought to tell me, the detective conducting this investigation."

"It was Friday afternoon!" she protested. "You were out, undercover or whatever you're doing."

"I'm not that far undercover, Frannie. Everybody at the club knows I'm a cop. The undercover thing is an excuse to be there at all times and continue investigating without no one being the wiser."

"Oh," she said. "Well, I didn't know that! Nobody tells _me_ anything around here." She raised her hands skyward in exasperation.

Ray looked over at Mort. "There any reason we would need the body again?"

Mort shook his head. "I don't think there's anything more for it to tell us that we couldn't get from the samples."

"You took samples?" Ray felt vaguely nauseated just thinking about it, so he didn't ask about the exact composition of the samples.

"Oh, yes. Quite a few. I could still tell you what she had for dinner the night before, if you needed to know."

"Do I?"

"Need to know what she had for dinner? No, I don't think so."

"Oh. Okay. Good."

But it still bothered him that Dino had claimed the body. It just seemed wrong, somehow.

Also, Ray'd danced there all weekend, and no one had said anything about a funeral service or a burial. And he knew Maddy well enough now to know she would at least have told Ray. So the only thing Ray could conclude was that Dino hadn't told anyone.

That kind of froze Ray's blood, but he reminded himself it was too soon to draw any major conclusions.

"Can I go now?" Frannie said. "It's time for Harding's cup of disgusting police station coffee."

Right on cue, Welsh's voice rang out over the bullpen: "Miss Vecchio!"

She went out, muttering to herself and waving her hands around.

Ray looked at Fraser, who shook his head as if to say he didn't understand her, either.

  
Ray and Fraser went back to Ray's desk and did paperwork for a while—or rather, Fraser proofread some of Ray's recent reports, and Ray sat with his feet up on the corner of his desk and broke pencils one after one.

"Ray, while wood of all kinds is admittedly a renewable resource, those pencils are made of a North American hardwood that requires many years to reach its full—"

"Skip the Audubon Society ad, please," Ray groaned, shaking his head like he needed to clear the Fraser lecture out of his ears. "I'll stop, because God forbid I should hurt the beautiful Canadian rainforest with my wasteful ways." He pushed his pencil cup out of his reach and started biting his nails instead.

"While your—er, Rae's—nails are a renewable resource also, I'm not sure she'll be delighted if you leave them ragged and unkempt, either," Fraser said under his breath. "Also, while Rae is certainly rather, er, informal in her body language at times, she does not typically sit like a, er..."

"Guy," Ray finished for him.

"Yes."

Ray sighed and moved his legs down off the desk, stretching them out under it instead. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm having trouble sitting still, here, Fraser. I only got a few days to solve this thing, and I got some...nerves, I guess. Feeling kind of nervous."

Fraser put his pen down and reached for Ray's hand.

Ray almost jerked it away, because, sure, he couldn't claim he didn't hang on to Fraser's hand now and then in specific situations where he could get away with it, but this was the bullpen, for Chrissakes—

—and then he remembered, oh, yeah, Fraser was touching _Rae's_ hand, his wife's hand, nothing queer to see here, move along, folks...

He was pretty sure Rae and Fraser didn't engage in any lovey-dovey behavior at work, but this wasn't that at all. It was just one partner supporting another partner in a way that wasn't going to look funny to anyone.

Especially since most of the people in this room had probably attended Rae's and Fraser's_ wedding,_ for Pete's sake.

Probably nobody was even going to notice.

Ray's throat ached a little. He tried to clear it inconspicu-whatsis. Without Fraser noticing.

But Fraser looked even more closely at him. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Just." He turned his hand over beneath Fraser's and squeezed back, and then reluctantly let go. "I don't usually get to do this with you, if you know what I mean. Not here."

"Understandable," Fraser said softly.

"I mean, there's times when I...when I think he's gonna...and then it's never the right time to say something, or I start to bring up the subject, but he's all, 'Ray, I'm still holding hands with you in this alley because I just fell off a fire escape and I'm shook up,' or 'Ray, nothing's changed, that was just a routine lifesaving procedure; all Canadian Mounties give air to their partners underwater with a lip-lock.'"

"Oh," Fraser said after a moment. "Well, it _was_ a lifesaving procedure."

"Yeah. Thought so."

"But it's traditionally performed by blowing air into the partner's nose."

"Really?" Ray said. "Isn't that kind of gross?"

"Not if your partner is imminently in danger of asphyxiation. Also it's simply easier to get a good seal on the nose, because it's smaller and projects outward from the face more."

"Oh yeah? So you blew air into Rae's nose on the sinking ship?"

"Well, no. I gave her air through her mouth."

"Why not her nose?"

"I—I'm not sure. It just seemed like an efficient method at the time. And...well, I didn't know if we were going to survive," Fraser said. There was a hint, just a tiny hint, of a twinkle in his eye.

"It was a kiss?!" Ray nearly shouted. He glanced around the bullpen quickly, but no one appeared to be paying him and Fraser any attention. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Was it a kiss, Fraser?"

"Well, no, it was a lifesaving technique." He paused. "But I _was_ in love with her, we were seeing each other at the time, and..." He cracked his neck. "Well, I can't actually say. It might have been a kiss as well as a way to deliver oxygen quickly. I suppose I acted somewhat instinctively. I didn't have a lot of time to weigh the alternatives."

"Huh. You did the Mr. Instinct thing, after all."

"Apparently."

Ray was nodding, adding things up. "So my Fraser buddy-breathing me on the mouth, was that a kiss?"

Fraser sighed. "I really can't say. Perhaps he was acting instinctively as well."

Huh. That gave Ray some food for thought, but he was going to have to chew on it later. Right now he had a bad guy to catch.

He shook out his neck and shoulders, trying to shake himself back to reality—or what passed for it in this crazy dimension. "Fraser, I think you and me gotta get another look at Dino's office. There's gotta be something we missed. We went in there cold, before, but now we got an idea what to look for."

Ray ticked off items on his fingers: "There's the drugs he procured for the first two victims, and now we got prescription sleeping pills, and we got this kava stuff. We're gonna find some of it somewhere. That is too many different chemicals, I'm thinking, to get rid of without leaving traces around, plus, the stuff is expensive, so why would he just throw away the extra?"

"Your point is very well taken, Ray."

"So when I'm up at the club I'm going take every chance I get, but what I really need is you and maybe Dief there."

"I'm sure Diefenbaker would be delighted to help."

Ray smiled. Yeah, Fraser was Fraser in any universe.

  
Ray got Welsh to put Huey and Dewey on the lookout for Dino's suppliers, because with the hours Ray had to spend at the club, he didn't have time to pound the pavement. But more evidence was always better, and there was still a good chance that they'd never find Dino's stash, so he figured he'd better turn over every rock he could.

And he wanted to leave Rae and Fraser in the best possible position to clear this case, if he didn't end up making an arrest himself.

That was, assuming this switcheroo was just going to expire at the full moon on Saturday night, and he'd turn back into a pumpkin. If he actually had to solve the case to get back home, that was even more reason to track down every possible lead. And he couldn't do it alone.

Fraser came up to rehearsals on Wednesday and pretended to take Ray to lunch; then when everyone else had gone up to the apartment and the club was empty, they sneaked back into Dino's office with Ray's lock pick and a couple of pairs of evidence gloves. Fraser brought Dief in to sniff around.

They had nearly forty-five minutes in there before they heard someone on the stairs, and in that time they found exactly nothing. Wherever Dino had stashed the stuff, it wasn't in his office. Still, Ray figured he should probably find a way to get the crime-scene geeks in soon to tear the place apart, because a paper trail would be almost as good. Ray figured an illegal script from a doctor's office wouldn't smell much different to Dief from the four million other pieces of paper in the room, but it'd smell pretty fishy to a jury.

They sneaked out again and were sitting at a table near the stage when the girls came in, and rehearsal was back in swing.

Since Ray hadn't actually eaten lunch, and he was now hungry enough to eat Fraser's hat, it was a tough afternoon, but he got through it, and Fraser made him dinner, which was cool, and then held him in bed all night, which was greatness.

He got to sleep in Thursday, to be rested for the first show of the weekend.

And when he finally did wake up on Thursday, he tried not to think about how it was now exactly four weeks since the Thursday he'd woken up in Rae's life.

Two more days, he reminded himself. He could be home in two more days.

  
He spent most of Thursday tracking down leads on potential suppliers for Dino's magic knockout drops, but didn't get anywhere, which was frustrating. If Rae was like Ray in her work habits, and it looked like she was, it was going to be tough, because fully half of Ray's informants were not the registered kind, and their names didn't appear on his Rolodex, but were kept in his head. That meant there were a lot of John Smiths on Ray's expense account every month, but luckily Welsh had known him since he was a rookie, knew he was clean, and ran interference for him.

Rae, though, apparently had a lot of Mary Smiths in the Rolodex in her head and fewer male informants, which made a ton of sense, especially considering a lot of meets with snitches took place in dark alleys and dive bars. So Ray didn't have access to all of Rae's leads on drug suppliers, and although Fraser had some of the information, he didn't have it all, and even after Ray spent some hours out rattling cages, nothing came up Bingo.

  
Thursday night, the show went okay, even though Rachelle almost missed her first cue because of fretting over a broken fingernail, and it turned out Ray had to push her out on stage the way Maddy had pushed him, the first night.

After that, everything went fine, and the audiences seemed like they loved everything all of the girls did, including Ray.

He went offstage thinking that, and he was in the dressing room taking his makeup off before it occurred to him to wonder when he'd started thinking of himself as one of the girls.

He shook his shoulders and neck out and went to find Dino, because it was time for Phase Two of his plan.

The way it went down, he didn't even have to say much. He found Dino in the club talking to some patrons, he waited for Dino to be free, followed him to his office, and then told him he wasn't going to go on the payroll after all.

Dino's face went slack, then his lips set in a firm line, and he said, "You can't do that, Rae."

"Already done," Ray said breezily, and added. "Look, my lieu don't want me dancing any more. It's not, whachacallit, _decorous_ for a police officer, and I rank a lot of guys that might give me grief over it. I'll finish out the weekend, though, don't worry. But after that I gotta quit. Sorry."

Dino simply said "Yes," which, what did he mean by that? Yes, you can go; yes you're a sorry bitch; yes, you're _gonna_ be sorry?

"So, look, it's been a trip, I'll never forget it." _That_ was for sure. "But I gotta leave."

Dino shook his head. "You'll be back."

"Nah, I don't think so. Unless you're gonna do one-shot shows once in a while, you know, occasional benefits? There's a place up on Broadway does those, I think; they're pretty good. I could do those, maybe. If you do them here I could come back here once in a while, too."

"It doesn't work that way," Dino said. "We're exclusive."

"Okay," Ray said, shrugging. "Okay, then. But the place up on Broadway isn't exclusive, so maybe I'll go up there. Keep my skills up, you know?" He worked his innocent, aw-shucks tone for all he was worth.

It was the PS de whatsis, the masterstroke, and it obviously hit home: Dino clenched both fists, and set his jaw, and Ray was just sorry Fraser wasn't there to see it.

Then Dino stalked over to his ledgers and flipped one open. "You're coming back," he said like it was a law of physics or something, and stating it was enough to make it true.

"Yeah, I'll be here tomorrow night and Saturday. Just not after that. Gotta get back to some cases that are actually going somewhere."

No, _that_ was the masterstroke.

Ray yawned elaborately and went out, but he could feel Dino's anger practically seeping through the walls behind him.

 


	12. Showdown

  
Friday night's show was a lot like Thursday's, except everyone hit their marks perfectly, and the crowd was a sellout, standing-room-only deal. After Ray's solo number they were all on their feet, whistling and stomping like it was the best thing they'd ever seen.

Maddy flounced in after the finale and told Ray he was a huge hit, and Ray just grinned and said he figured the bartender must've been handing out two-for-one specials all night. But she pulled him back out on the stage to take a bow with everyone, like always, and he had to admit, the crowd's response really did feel pretty good. Almost as good as the baseball fans in Willison when he'd hit the walk-off grand slam, and that was saying something.

Fraser came in, Dief at his heels, while Ray was still drinking water and recovering. He planted a sweet kiss on Ray's lips and congratulated him, and then went out to walk Dief.

And Ray, his lips still tingling from that kiss, sat back and looked down at his costume, the shiny black shirt and the white jacket, the modest swells of his breasts underneath the shirt, and his long slender legs, and the little lace-up boots on his feet, and he thought:_ this could have been me._

And it still could be, might be, if...

It didn't bear imagining, but with the feeling of Fraser's kiss still on his lips, the thought didn't freak him out as much as usual.

If anyone had asked him, before this freaky thing had happened, whether he'd be able to live as a girl, he'd have said no way, never in a million years. But now that he'd actually done it for a month, he'd discovered it really wasn't that different. He hadn't turned into some kind of alien from Venus or anything, he was just...Ray. Ray in a body that had girl parts instead of boy parts, that wasn't as tall or as strong, but was more flexible and had keener senses—but Ray who was still himself in every way that counted.

It just wasn't that different after all.

He was definitely going to have a lot of things to think about when he got back.

Meanwhile, he figured he'd better get changed, find Fraser and the wolf, and haul their skinny asses home for some rest. The air of excitement had lingered in the club after the last patron had left, but Ray was tired, not only from the show and the week's work, but of the whole month spent as Rae.

Maddy and the girls had gone upstairs, and the place was really starting to quiet down, so Ray slapped his cheeks a couple of times till he woke himself up, and applied himself to getting ready to leave. He got out of his costume in record time and pulled his jeans and his shirts on, trying to plan his next move. He didn't know for sure whether he'd pushed Dino over that line that would finally get him talking, but maybe he should try one more time before calling it a night, because it was Friday, one day shy of the full lunar month that Maddy had mentioned in her card reading.

He still didn't know whether to believe the stuff she'd said; he didn't have any evidence one way or the other, except for that little shiver of recognition he'd felt at the time. It was just a hunch like his other hunches, but his hunches often were good, and he really had nothing else to go on. He figured either he'd solve the case soon and leave it in the Done box for Rae, or he'd solve it as the price of getting his own life back. Either way, he had a little over twenty-four hours till the full moon, and he wanted to use the time well.

And if he _was_ out of here at the full moon, no matter what, like the expiration date on a curse or something, then he'd like to leave as few loose ends for Rae as possible.

Especially with Fraser.

Which, where the hell was Fraser, anyway? Jeez, that wolf had a bladder the size of a small reservoir. Ray smiled to himself. Now there was one individual who hadn't changed at all between universes. Dief was the same doughnut-hunting, ear-licking maniac he was in Ray's world.

Ray looked at his place at the mirror, and realized it looked kind of messy, makeup thrown around, crumpled tissues. He straightened it up a little, because there was the show tomorrow night, and since that was technically before the full moon, he might still be here. He caught sight of his hair in the mirror and wondered if he needed a haircut, 'cause it looked kind of long...and then he remembered, oh yeah, it was _Rae's_ hair. Maybe she liked it this length. He had no way of knowing when she'd last had it cut, but he figured after four weeks, it'd be time soon, if it wasn't late already.

He was jittery, he was twitchy, he was supposed to be gathering up his stuff. He tried to make himself concentrate, which wasn't the easiest thing, most days.

Damn, it was quiet in the hallway outside the dressing room. Everybody must've gone up to the apartment for champagne—Maddy's idea, but Ray had okayed it, as long as at least one of the uniforms was up there. The club had to appear as normal as possible: just another show, another weekend, business as usual. Except for the pressure Ray was putting on Dino, looking for the chink in his façade, everything was pretty normal, or what passed for it in this club, anyway.

Still, the girls and everyone had disappeared just when Fraser was out walking Dief. Hell of a moment for everyone to scram, but maybe it was, whatchacallit, opportune. If everybody was upstairs, maybe Ray could get another look at Dino's office while the ground floor was deserted.

He felt kind of scattered. He'd better gather up his stuff and find Fraser. His shoulder holster was still with his costume and his gun was locked into his duffle bag, under the counter. He looked around for his keys and his glasses.

And then he felt, rather than heard, someone standing at the door, and he whipped his head up.

Dino was there, standing framed in the exact center of the doorway, hands at his sides. There was something subtly off about his posture. He was kind of a tubby guy; usually he never looked like he was drawing himself up straight. But he did now. His eyes, too, they had a hard look in them. Determined.

"You're staying," Dino said firmly.

"Huh? No, I'm getting ready to go." Ray glanced at him, then looked on the counter. Damn, where were his glasses? Rae's glasses were so hard to see with those thin wire frames, not as visible as Ray's clunky black ones. Had he left them in the pocket of his jacket?

"You're not leaving me," Dino said. "You're staying in the cast. You belong here."

Ray looked up. "I can't claim I'm not a little fucked up, gender-wise, so I see where you're coming from, but like I told you, I changed my mind."

"You don't get to do that."

"Wake up and smell the reality, Dino. I'm a cop. And I'm sorry; if you spent any money advertising me or anything, I'll pay you back." Well, the city would, maybe, but Ray just needed to keep Dino talking.

Ray's heart beat faster. He had a feeling this was it. Dino was about to confess or at least incriminate himself. Ray had to keep his cool, keep the guy talking.

And where the hell was Fraser? It would really help to have a witness.

"What happened to Charla, Dino?" Ray could hear his voice rising, and he hated how shrill it sounded, but with his female vocal cords, there wasn't a lot he could do to change that. "Charla wanted to leave, but you didn't let her, did you?"

And Dino went quiet. Still. "Oh, no," he said softly. "No, she couldn't leave me."

"She was all set to leave. She had her ticket to San Francisco and she had her registration to photography school, and she was leaving."

"No. Charla came back."

"In a box!" Ray said, and now he really was yelling. "That's not coming back, Dino. That is _dead, _or didn't you get that? She's never coming back."

"You're wrong," Dino said, still way too calm. "She'll never leave me now."

"She is in the _ground,"_ Ray yelled.

Dino paled, and two red spots appeared the middle of his pale cheeks. "Oh, no. I wouldn't let them put her into the ground. She'll always be with me now."

And his gaze slid sideways and up. To the shelf over the far row of lights, the one that Ray had noticed and dismissed the first day he used the dressing room.

The shelf with the flowers and the two empty vases on it. Ray looked.

Holy fuck.

The flowers were still there. And now there were three vases, not two.

Ray's blood ran ice-cold. They weren't vases.

They were urns.

The kind people kept ashes in.

Fuck.

He turned back to Dino. "You got space up there for a lot of urns?" he asked.

Dino shrugged. "If necessary. Rather have you stay and perform."

Well, that was a not-very-veiled threat, but as an incriminating statement, it wasn't enough.

"Care to tell me why?" Ray asked, jerking his head in the direction of the urns, but unable to look straight at them. He was freaking out enough, without that.

Family stays together," Dino repeated slowly and pointedly, like he was repeating a lesson to a child.

Rack tried a different tack. "The other two girls, the first ones. They left weeks before you, um, brought them home. Why didn't you do it earlier?"

Dino shrugged. "They said they were going to come back, but they were lying to me. All they really wanted was another fix. I just saw that they got it." He folded his arms across his chest. "That stuff they were using, it's unpredictable."

"Why didn't you just get them help, Dino? There's clinics all over the city that can help with an addiction."

Dino shook his head. "They were working for somebody else. That wasn't okay. See, we're exclusive. My girls are the only ones."

"I hate to break it to you," Ray said. "But I been reading up on this intersex thing, and there's thousands in this country alone."

"Not working as drag queens," Dino said.

"Yeah, well, I bet you're wrong about that."

Dino set his hands on his hips. "One at a time," he said. "I'm a patient man."

"Oh, yeah? So patient that you didn't even wait till Charla gave her notice before you killed her."

"She had her registration from school. She showed me. That was notice," Dino said.

"How'd you do it? C'mon, spill. We know about the kava stuff in the tea. Traces of barbiturate in the body. Is that what did it? You helped her get to sleep...and not wake up."

Dino shrugged. "Her pillow was very soft," he said.

"Huh?"

"Girls who take sleeping pills shouldn't use really soft pillows and comforters and things. You put your face in one of those, you might forget to breathe."

"Oh, God," Ray said, feeling like he was going to puke. "You smothered her with her own pillow?"

"So what? You can't prove nothing," Dino said.

"She was so out of it she couldn't fight back. You son of a bitch."

"It was for the best," Dino said. He had that disgustingly smug look on his face, and that burned Ray up, it really did, so much that instead of doing anything sensible, like going for his gun, or yelling for the uniforms and Fraser, or even just staying at arm's length from Dino, he got up in his face. Which would have been risky enough in his own body, but in Rae's it was just plain stupid.

Ray wasn't thinking. He was yelling. "You're admitting you killed her, you scumbag?"

"Yeah," Dino said. "Yeah, I killed her. You'll never prove it."

"The hell I won't. You are under arrest," Ray said. "For the murders of the first two girls who left, what were their names? Darlene and, uh, Viv?"

"Vivian," Dino said.

"And for Charla's murder," Ray said. You kill anybody else or just those three?"

"Just the three," Dino said. "So far." And then he moved. He took a quick step toward Ray, quicker than Ray'd thought the guy could move, and pushed him back so hard against the counter that it dug into his spine painfully.

Ray tried to drop, tried to go into a fighter's crouch, tried to slither out of Dino's grasp, and...he couldn't. There was no give in either the counter or Dino's bulk, and the edge of the counter was digging in painfully between two vertebrae, so hard that Ray was afraid something might crack soon.

Dino didn't look like much, but he was solid, and he was determined, and he was pressing his stubby fingers into Ray's solar plexus so hard that Ray couldn't catch his breath.

And where the hell was Fraser?

It hit Ray, the last in a series of shocks, that he really _couldn't _fight Dino effectively. Not in this body. Not without his gun, which was still locked in his duffle bag, under the counter, way out of his reach.

A good scream ought to bring someone running, though: if not Fraser, then one of the uniforms from upstairs. He opened his mouth to yell, and that was the moment that Dino whipped him around and clamped an arm around Ray's chest and the other hand around Ray's throat.

That effectively nixed the yelling. Ray tried to kick, but the way Dino was holding him, he just flailed his feet and kicked a chair, missing Dino by a mile.

"You're a good dancer," Dino said. "You shoulda stayed with me, too." His grip on Ray was still agonizingly tight.

Clearly he didn't know how to do a proper choke hold, though, and that bought Ray a little time. He tried to keep his chin down, keep some space, no matter how little, between his throat and Dino's arm.

 "You don't want to do this, Dino," he wheezed. His voice was just a raspy whisper, but at least he could get the words out "I'm a cop. You do this, they will hunt you down."

Dino wasn't listening to Ray any more. He forced Ray's head back just enough so that Ray found himself staring up at the three urns again. He didn't have to see Dino's eyes to read a fourth urn there.

No fucking way. No _way_ was Rae going to end up part of that grisly collection. He struggled for air.

But Dino's hands were around Ray's throat, and those damn rings were hard, starting to bruise him, starting to crush his throat; he couldn't pull in enough breath, and that slowed his reactions, weakened his hands.

He scrabbled at Dino's hands, but couldn't get a hard enough grip to pull them off him. The creep was stocky, outweighing Ray by a hundred pounds at least, and the arm strength Ray should have been able to call on just wasn't there, dammit; in Rae's form, he just didn't have it. He'd worked out every day, but he hadn't sparred with Fraser like he'd wanted to. Fraser'd looked at him like he was nuts when he suggested it, and had flatly refused. Because, of course, Fraser would never hit a woman.

Hell, it had been hard enough getting Fraser to hit him, sparring or otherwise, when he was a man.

Dino didn't appear to have that same chivalry problem.

Dino hadn't had a problem with killing three women, and he didn't have a problem with trying to kill a cop.

Right now, that was Ray's problem. Under Dino's heavy, tight grip, Ray was beginning to see stars. Tears squeezed out of his eyes, and his head started to swim. He managed to dig his nails into Dino's hands, making Dino yelp, but the creep didn't let up any, just kept squeezing Ray tighter and tighter.

"You idiot," Ray wheezed with the little bit of air he still had available, his voice coming out all squeaky and strange, even for Rae's usual voice. "They're gonna see your fingermarks. They're gonna know it was you."

Idiot wasn't listening. He muttered something about what the hell did he have to do to stay exclusive, and that was the last thing he said before he apparently turned all his attention to killing Ray.

He was bigger and heavier, and Ray's gun was across the damned room, he'd left it there like an idiot; he hadn't twigged to the fact that he was alone with the murder suspect, who was doing a pretty good job of incriminating himself at the moment. And Ray had okayed Miller standing guard outside the main doors while the club aired out, stupid thing number two, because the suspect was in _here—_and _where the hell was Fraser,_ dammit, this was _not_ a good time to be outside licking evidence, or whatever the hell he was doing.

It was Ray's fault. He was going to die—Rae was going to die—and it was going to be his fault, because he'd let his guard down. Rae wouldn't have. She'd grown up a woman; she would have been aware of being more vulnerable, alone with a guy in the room, especially the freak she suspected for murder. She'd have twigged earlier to Dino's intentions.

She'd have kept her gun on her.

Damn.

Ray was seeing stars. He hung on, dug his hands in harder. Christ. Help me, he thought. Are you there, God? Our Father Who art in heaven...you did this to me. You put me here to do something, and I been trying so hard, but I can't always see how. Help me now, help me find the way out.

He forced himself to think, even though his head swam, and his brain cells had to be starving for oxygen.

And maybe some of the cells buddy-breathed some of the others, because a thought managed to swim through: there had to be something Ray had learned from growing up male that could substitute for the awareness Rae would have had, the experience she must have had with fighting in this body.

There had to be something, c'mon. What advantage did he have that Rae didn't? He'd been a skinny, geeky kid with glasses, hardly bigger than most of the girls his age, always getting picked on by freaks like Mickey Zawadzki, getting into scrapes and having to fight his way out. He'd broken his glasses a dozen times over the years, mostly from those schoolyard fights, and his mother sighed and his father fumed silently, always unhappy, always disappointed in Ray, because couldn't a smart kid like Ray figure out how to defuse a situation without having to resort to violence all the time, and wasn't there enough of that in the world already?

Rae probably hadn't had a past like that. She probably hadn't been beat up many times, if at all, not like the skinny, geeky boy Ray'd been. Ray'd learned some tricks to get away from the worst of it; you had to. It had made him a better cop, knowing how to talk people down, how to say what they wanted to hear so they'd let you go, or at least ease up enough for you to gain some ground.

Dino was just another schoolyard bully. Deadlier, but just as stupid. Ray sucked some air in past the obstruction of his half-closed throat and thought hard and fast. He didn't have that much time before Dino broke his trachea, and if that happened, it'd be _Goodbye, Ray_, no matter how fast Fraser made it in here.

And damn it to hell, Ray was _not_ going to do that to Fraser, not his Fraser or any Fraser. He was not going to make Ben come in here with nothing left to do but watch Rae die in his arms.

Rae hadn't boxed. She probably hadn't played hockey, either. So she wouldn't know...right. It was worth a try.

Ray went rubber-legs like a little kid trying to give his mom the slip. He squirmed around in Dino's grip, trying to get loose in his clothes, just like when he'd played hockey as a kid and when the grownups weren't looking, the kids got into fights, imitating the pros. Your opponent would try to hold you by the jersey, and if you let them, they'd punch your lights out, so you didn't let them. Jerseys were loose; the minute you slipped out of yours, the guy punching you had nothing to hold you with, and he'd usually fall backwards and then you could get away or jump on top of him and punch_ his _lights out for a change, see how _he_ liked it.

Rae's clothes weren't as loose as a hockey jersey, but they'd be loose enough, if Ray twisted just right. At least he'd held firm on the bra issue—he'd refused to wear even the sport-style ones, so he had on only a t-shirt with a tank top layered over it, just like his first day. They weren't that loose, but they'd still come off if he maneuvered around just right, and thank God for her small breasts, which wouldn't prevent the shirts from slipping off easily.

He just had to relax a little, slump a little against Dino as though he were giving in, too tired to fight, and since Dino usually drugged his victims first, that had to be what he was used to, and it would encourage him to relax his guard.

It did.

Dino's grip loosened just a tiny, tiny, bit, and the pain in Ray's throat was still burning—hurting even worse, weirdly enough, when the pressure let up some—but there was a little more air available, and that was all he needed. He zigged, then he zagged, and he was sliding free, out of his shirts, and Dino's left hand was no longer holding him tight against his body. So Ray had an elbow free to slam into Dino's gut, and that did the trick, forcing the breath from Dino's lungs and making the hand that was on Ray's throat spring open suddenly.

Ray slithered completely free of Dino's grip and dropped to the floor, rolling to a crouch, his fists in front of him. Dino was gasping for air. Ray was, too, his throat still felt half-crushed, and he tried to yell for Fraser, but managed only a hoarse whisper. Dino charged him, and Ray shot up quick, head-butting him, realizing too late—ow!—that Rae wouldn't have tried this on a guy built like a stone wall; she'd have rolled onto her back and kicked, knowing she had as much strength in her legs as any guy her size.

Too late. Ray saw stars, and Dino's arms were around Ray again, this time trying to crush him like a python, Ray's face pressed into Dino's belly, which was surprisingly muscular over the layer of fat. It was like being smothered in a rubber pillow, and it would kill just as surely as a broken trachea.

But the position had an advantage the other hold hadn't, and Ray didn't need a lot of strength or air to take it. He brought his left fist up hard into Dino's crotch, and though he didn't make solid contact, he got the information he needed, and when he reached immediately with his right, a one-two shot, his aim was point-blank.

That, and the fact that Dino didn't wear jeans but only thin dress trousers, worked in Ray's favor. He got his hand firmly around Dino's balls and dug his short nails in as hard as he could, then pulled, tugged, twisted hard, and had Dino down on the floor, writhing in pain, only seconds later.

Seconds after that, he had his foot planted firmly in the small of Dino's back and the cold barrel of his Beretta pressed against the back of Dino's neck. He didn't have the voice to yell, and Rae's vocal cords weren't normally up to the kind of growl Ray felt rising in his chest, but his throat was pretty husky because of the choking, and he heard a raspy voice come out of him that was almost like his own when he was ripping mad. "Stay put, scumbag, you are under arrest for attempted murder of a cop, namely me, and probably the other murders, too, and if you so much as twitch in this direction I am going to rip your stupid balls _off _this time and feed them to the wolf."

"—Ray!"

Ray whipped his head up to see Fraser at the door. At his side, Dief squeezed in through the door and bared his teeth next to Dino's ear, growling softly and breathing wolfy breath on him.

"You hold him, Dief," Ray said, and went to get his cuffs. Dino made muffled whimpery sounds from the floor.

"My, God, Ray, what did he do to you?"

Ray figured he mustn't look too good.

"Tried to kill me, what's it look like?" He didn't sound too good, either.

"That's what it looks like."

"Yeah, well, he failed."

"Why is he...?" Frase gestured, indicating the way Dino was all curled up in the fetal position on the floor, moaning like an animal with its foot in a trap.

"I fought dirty," Ray said, and made a grabbing-and-twisting motion with his hand. "He might need a doctor."

Fraser winced.

"Yeah," Ray said. "Ordinarily I would not do that to my worst enemy, but there's enemies and then there's enemies. I draw the line at people trying to kill me."

Fraser's fingertips ghosted over Ray's throat, and he winced again, considerably harder, Ray noted with some satisfaction. "It appears he very nearly succeeded. Are you still in pain?"

Ray nodded, swallowed with difficulty. "I can breathe okay, though."

"You'll need to be checked out at the hospital as well," Fraser said.

Ray grabbed his hand. "I didn't feel anything break or tear," he said, his voice still a very hoarse whisper. "Close, but I got away in time."

"You're going to hospital, Ray."

"Yeah, of course. I want to get checked out. I'm just trying to tell you I think I'm okay."

"I'd like to hear that from a doctor," Fraser said, which was very not like him, Ray thought, but then he remembered he'd never known a married Benton Fraser before, so maybe this wasn't that unusual after all. Ray knew he'd have reacted the same way if anybody had choked Stella and tried to kill her.

"All right." He held up a hand. "I gotta breathe a minute. I gotta... And somebody has to read Scumbag here his rights."

"Rest your voice," Fraser said. "I'll remind the backup officers about the Miranda warning." He was unhooking a pair of cuffs from his belt and carefully binding Dino's hands behind his back. Ray was of the opinion that he was being far too gentle, but then, they didn't want the creep getting off on a technicality. And Fraser's jaw was set hard, his eyes snapping-blue. He looked like one seriously pissed-off Mountie.

Ray could only imagine what it was costing Fraser not to beat Dino to a little bloody pulp right there.

"Okay. Get the...officers...in here...as soon as you hear them...screech to a stop."

"All right," Fraser said, but then he grabbed Ray's wrist and looked him over. "Er...oh, dear."

"Huh?" Ray had lowered his gun, now that Dino was subdued; he clicked the safety back on and just leaned over, propping his free hand on his thigh, and just concentrated on his breathing. Breathing was good. Breathing was, like, his favorite thing ever.

"Where is your shirt?" Fraser said.

And whaddya know, Benton Fraser had finally walked into a room and seen Ray—his wife, so to speak—half-naked, and he hadn't reacted or even noticed right away.

Might've had something to do with the big black-and-blue fingermarks and purple ring marks on his neck, Ray thought. He breathed some more, loving the feeling of the air going in even though there was pain, too.

"How did you lose them? Oh, God, he didn't try to...did he?"

Fraser sounded even more horrified than he had when he'd appeared at the door.

Oh, that? "Nah. That was just from me pulling the old hockey-jersey trick. My shirts are probably underneath Dino at the moment." He cocked his head at the costume rack. Give me the shirt from my costume. It's not like I'll be needing it for another performance."

He looked over at Dino, who was now moaning regularly and looking distinctly green around the gills. "In case you were wondering, Mr. Impress-Asshole, I quit."

  
It wasn't that simple to wrap up the case, of course. It never was. Since Ray'd been hurt, though, he didn't have to go through the usual haul-'em-in, book'-em routine. Huey and Dewey got the honor, and they discharged the duty at the hospital, because Dino was getting surgery for the testicular torsion thingy Ray had done to him. Ray hoped he hadn't bought some kind of bad male karma, doing that to another guy, but then he remembered, oh, yeah, Dino _had been trying to kill him,_ and he figured that was, whatchacallit, a positive defense, and karma would understand.

People understood, too. When Dino's lawyer got a look at Ray's technicolor throat, he turned white, and nobody even filed any police-brutality charges.

Ray got checked out at the hospital himself, six ways from Sunday, and they had to look down his throat and stuff, and give him some nasty narcotics that made him loopy and out of it, but Fraser stayed with him the entire time like he promised, and even watched, and made sure nobody did nothing untoward. Which, Ray didn't know what Fraser was worrying about; it was just doctors taking care of him, but Fraser feeling extra-protective at this juncture Ray could understand. And Ray had no problem with Fraser staying with him and holding his hand as soon as that was allowed.

After Ray woke up, Ray's doctor came in and said his throat was looking bruised, but going to recover just fine, and he should just take it easy for a few days and not talk too much.

After that, Ray got seen by cops, too, got his bruises photographed and scrapings taken from under his nails and stuff like that. He was too loopy to give any more of a statement than he already had to Welsh at the scene, but he had to wait while Fraser gave his, and he drifted in and out, half-listening to it, because of course Fraser had refused to leave Ray alone, and was giving his statement right there at Ray's bedside.

Finally, Ray got the okay to leave as long as Fraser took him right home, and Fraser did.

  
When they got back to the house, Fraser started puttering around almost obsessively, tidying up in the kitchen and whatever, but first he'd made Ray sit down on the sofa, turned on the television for him, and handed him the remote with strict instructions not to do anything more strenuous than flip channels.

For once, Ray was content to sit still, so he put on whatever sports chatter he could find and lay back to listen to how badly all of the Chicago teams sucked and were planning to suck for the foreseeable future. Jeez, they couldn't catch a break even in another fucking dimension.

On the first commercial, he looked around the living room. Yeah, same place he'd gotten used to over the past month. It was pretty. It was white and tan and wood, with touches of blue. It was much nicer than his ratty old bachelor apartment.

But he'd kind of been hoping to see his ratty old bachelor apartment right about now.

He leaned back on the couch cushions and felt around for another pillow to tuck behind his sore neck.

He didn't want to think, but some local used-car dealer was blabbing onscreen, and Ray's brain could not concentrate on idiotic blab, so the thoughts he did not want to have came into his brain instead.

When was he going to get to go home?

He'd done everything he was supposed to do here, hadn't he? The bad guy was locked up, Maddy and the other girls were safe.

And Fraser—Fraser was okay. He was alive and well and no more unhinged than usual.

Ray tried to think clearly, which was not so easy with the crap the doctors had given him. Maybe it just wasn't the full moon yet.

Or maybe it was because of the loose ends in the case that he still had to tie up. He didn't need to hear Stella in full rant mode to know that there were going to be insanity defenses up the wazoo on this one, and that an army of lawyers would try to get Dino's confessions thrown out and probably succeed, because they had only Ray's word on that. The attempted murder of a cop, Dino was going down for, Ray was pretty sure that one was gonna stick like glue. But the Murder One beefs, those were tougher, since Ray hadn't found hard evidence.

Ray'd missed something, he knew he had, and it yanked his chain big time. So maybe that was it: he wasn't ready to leave till he had this thing sewn up for Rae as tight as he could make it.

He just didn't know when he was going to get the chance. It wasn't like he could go into the station now, even if he'd be of any use there. He wasn't sure even standing up was a good idea at the moment, and Fraser obviously agreed, because he'd been kind of stern about making Ray rest on the couch. "Stay there, Ray, you need to recuperate."

And Ray was tired. He was so tired. He started to drift. He'd just rest a few minutes and then he could get back on the case. _His_ case, this time. The case of getting Ray back to his own body.

Which he was _going _to do, no matter what, he promised himself. His own Fraser had to be so worried about him.

I'm gonna figure it out, buddy, he told Fraser in his head. I'm gonna figure the rest of it out, and I'm coming back to you, because we are partners, we are a _duet, _dammit, and I am _not_ taking this transfer....

 


	13. Sweet Sorrow

He woke, disoriented, in bed next to Ben. Rae's bed. He didn't have to tug the sheet off and look down at himself to confirm it, but he did, anyway, and, yeah: still Rae's body, naked and decked out in colorful bruises.

Also, his throat hurt like a bitch.

It was morning, though, and he felt pretty wide awake, so he stretched carefully—it wasn't only his throat that was sore; the rest of him wasn't that much better—and finally he swung his legs over the side and tried standing. Okay, not so bad after all. No worse than when Mason Dixon had wiped up the ring with him, anyway.

He went into the bathroom to find some water. He couldn't gulp it like he wanted to, so he settled for sipping it, and he hadn't even got very much before he heard Fraser come into the bathroom behind him.

He turned, and caught sight of both of them in the mirror: him, looking like Rae, and Fraser behind him, looking concerned and gorgeous and...loving. Like a guy who loved him.

Ray's knees felt kind of unsteady.

"Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Little sore, but I've had worse."

Fraser looked like he didn't believe him, so Ray made fists and feinted at the mirror a few times. "I used to box, Ben; I've had worse, trust me."

"But Rae hasn't," Fraser said. "It's difficult to look at your injuries."

"Yeah, I know. Anybody ever did something like this to Stella, I'd be in prison, because I'd have killed them in a blind rage."

"No you wouldn't, Ray."

"I think I would."

Fraser sighed. "You'd arrest the perpetrator. I realize you might, er, accidentally inflict some—"

Ray snorted. "Yeah, accidentally on purpose."

"But you'd stop short of murder."

Ray shrugged. "Maybe. I ain't been put to that test, and I hope I never am."

"That is my fervent hope also, Ray. But, ah...you can trust me, I think."

"Of course I trust you."

"You can trust me to know that you're a good man, Ray. The very best."

Ray had to grin, couldn't meet Fraser's eyes. "Not even close," he said, "but I appreciate your whatchacallit, selective blindness on the subject."

"I love you," Fraser said.

Ray nodded. "Me, too, I love you."

"I love _you,_ Ray. Stanley Raymond Kowalski."

Ray turned, pressed his face against Fraser's neck, and breathed in the sweet scent of him. "Thanks," he said after he got himself under control enough. "I don't know if I'm ever gonna hear my Fraser said anything like that, at least not in the same way. So, um. It means a lot that you did."

Fraser kissed him for a minute or two—heaven—and then steered him back to bed. "You're injured, Ray. You need more rest."

"It might be my last day here, Fraser."

"Then Rae will need you to rest." Fraser sounded all practical and reasonable...and maybe a little scared, underneath. He was hiding it pretty good, as usual, but Ray knew Fraser's nervous tells, and he saw the whole set of them, one after the other.

He stayed lying down, but reached up and got hold of Fraser's hand. "It'll be all right," he said. "She's gonna be back here with you soon, just focus on that."

"I'm trying to," Fraser said, "and I can't wait for her to be back, but her being back means that in all likelihood I'll never see _you_ again."

Ray smiled. It made him feel good to know this Fraser would miss him. "Nah, just look in her eyes and you'll see me there. You'll know. I'm her...what did you call it? The thing in Latin?"

"Animus," Fraser said. "Really it's just a philosophical concept."

"Feels pretty real to me," Ray said.

Fraser leaned over and kissed his forehead. "To me, also," he said.

* * *

Ray woke feeling really strange. Strange dream, he thought, knuckling his eyes. He couldn't really remember it, just vague impressions. Something had been off, he'd been a woman...

That was it.

In his dream, he'd been Rae.

Which he would have expected that to be part of the deal, here, but it hadn't been that way. This was the first time since he'd woken up in Rae's form that he'd _also_ been Rae in a dream.

He wondered if it meant anything. He tried to remember specifics about the dream, but all he got was fleeting images, vague impressions. Having coffee with Maddy, rehearsing at the club.

Jeez, he ought to call, let her know he was all right, find out how the girls were. He yawned and rolled out of bed. If the light streaming in through the blinds was any indication, it was right around noon. He felt a lot better after all the sleep, and he thought his throat could maybe tolerate a cup of coffee.

He went into the kitchen, found Fraser there as usual, only instead of an uneaten breakfast, Ben had a case file spread out in front of him.

Fraser looked up, and in the unguarded second between looking up and recognizing Ray, that familiar, painful hope flared in his eyes.

"Soon," Ray said. "I got a feeling."

"A hunch?"

Ray shrugged. "Don't know. Just...I dreamed I was her."

Fraser cocked his head, awaiting an explanation, and Ray realized he hadn't really told Fraser much about his dreams. "See, in my dreams, I'm always _me_ again, a guy. But just now when I woke up, I thought...nah, I'm sure: in that dream, I was her. So I'm thinking...soon."

Fraser nodded, swallowed kind of hard, looked away.

Yeah, buddy, Ray thought. There wasn't really much else to say. He was going to miss this Fraser, too. Even though they were so alike. This Benton Fraser had gotten Ray through the toughest month of his life. _This _Fraser was the only Fraser who'd ever kissed him—well, kissed him and owned up to it, anyway. This Fraser was the one who'd made love to him...and told him "I love you."

And although Ray loved the Fraser who was his original partner, loved him so much he would step in front of a bullet for him, drown in Lake Superior for him, do pretty much anything for him, it was going to be hard to leave Rae's Fraser, just the same.

Ray went over to the coffeepot, found his perfect cup of joe all ready for him, and looked around for something sweet to put in it. Hah, look, Smarties right there waiting for him. They were Canadian, and Fraser had to go to a special store to find them. And, yeah, at home Fraser did that once in a while for Ray, and here Fraser obviously did it for his Rae, too, but they'd been fresh out of them when Ray'd showed up in Rae's life.

Fraser had gone to that out-of-the-way store the very next day, for only one reason: because Ray, R-A-Y, got a kick out of them.

Ray couldn't help smiling. He opened the package and started to dump some in, one by one...and then he stopped.

"Holy shit. Holy shit, Fraser."

"What is it?"

"I remember my dream." He'd been having coffee with Maddy, on a break from rehearsing. He'd pulled a box of Smarties out of his pocket to put some in his coffee, and then of course had to explain them to her, and she'd laughed so hard she almost spit out her own coffee, which made Ray laugh, because Maddy _never _made an ungraceful, dopey move like Ray was always doing, and he was gonna get some mileage out of teasing her about that.

When Maddy had stopped laughing, she got kind of quiet and said she wished Charla were there, because Charla liked sweet stuff in her coffee and her tea, which the rest of the girls couldn't stand, and it would've been great to see what she would have made of the Smarties thing.

He looked at Fraser, urgently. "It wasn't a dream. I mean, just the last bit wasn't. It was a memory. Part of it really happened. Last week."

He snapped his fingers. "The Smarties."

"The Smarties?"

"No, not the Smarties, a conversation I had with Maddy about the Smarties, which ended up being about Charla, and how she always took her coffee." He stabbed a finger into the air. "She was the only one who took sugar, and she used a lot of it. I didn't know about the low-blood-pressure thing with Charla until Mort told us on Thursday, but it makes sense. The caffeine and sugar, it's like a folk remedy. My mom, she used to have the same thing, that's where I got the habit of putting in sugar, just, I got normal blood pressure, so I only take one. But Charla..."

"No one checked for a sugar bowl," Fraser said. "I don't believe one was on the counter the afternoon I found the tea. I don't understand why I didn't think of it."

"You kind of had a lot on your mind," Ray said. "Anyway, I've seen their sugar bowl, and it doesn't look new. You know how Maddy is; she probably did that tidying-up thing you and she are so anal about, and Dino never got the chance to remove it, because we've had the place crawling with cops ever since."

"Surely someone else would have used some sugar since then," Fraser said. "You went to brunch at the apartment last Monday."

"Yeah, but nobody there used the sugar. The girls don't take it, not even Rachelle. Dino doesn't drink coffee. Maddy gave Beaufort a cup, and I remember thinking that of course he had to be Mr. Fitness God and not take sugar in his coffee. If he even drank the coffee, which I'm not sure he did."

"You take sugar," Fraser pointed out.

"Maddy had Smarties there for me. She still thought it was funny and maybe a little disgusting, but she had them there." He smacked his hand down on the counter. "We never tested the sugar bowl. What we're looking for could've been right there all along."

Fraser picked up the phone and handed it to him. "Perhaps you should call it in."

"No, Fraser. This I gotta do myself. I gotta go up to the club."

"You're still injured, Ray."

"I gotta do it. And if I'm out of here tonight, and I think I might be, then I really want to say goodbye to Maddy and the girls."

After a moment, Fraser nodded. "All right, Ray. But you're not going alone."

"Of course not. Partners, Fraser. Partners."  
 

They found enough barbiturate in the sugar bowl to knock out a whole chorus line, and they got a good collection of prints off it, too, though it was anybody's guess whether Dino's would still be on there. Fraser tasted it, spit it out, gave Ray the "surely you didn't think I'd go an entire month without tasting something dangerous" look, and it felt almost _normal._

Maddy'd been crying a little when they got there, looking a lot like she did when Ray first met her. After they found the stuff and got the evidence crew crawling all over the place, all over again, she was practically sobbing.

And Ray could get that, _Dino's _had been her home, and now her apartment was going to be off limits for another week, probably, while the crime scene people redid the job they'd botched up in the first place. After that, she'd probably have to move out anyway, unless somebody bought the business from Dino pretty quickly.

Turned out Rachelle still had the rest of the month paid for in her little dive apartment, so the girls at least would have a roof over their heads while they decided what to do next. Maddy had been planning to move on, anyway, so Ray figured she'd be all right.

Ray hugged them all and didn't promise to write, because it wasn't likely there'd ever be mail service between universes, and if Rae ran into one of them on the street, she'd probably never even recognize them.

Which was just one more sad thing that Ray couldn't afford to think about right now. The clock was ticking down; he could practically feel it humming inside him, this knowledge—maybe more of a hunch, but Ray was going with it, his subconscious had been firing on all cylinders lately—that he had very little time left here...

...to say goodbye.

Yeah. Maddy deserved that_; _along with Fraser she'd helped him manage as Rae, she'd helped him get through the ordeal with, well, if he hadn't exactly always had grace, at least he'd had some style.

He had to admit, parts of it had even been fun.

"Look, Maddy, I...I have to tell you something."

"You're leaving." As though she knew.

He took her hand. "Yeah. I mean, I'm staying in Chicago; that is, Rae Kowalski is staying. I know that sounds weird, but I just want you to know...just..." He didn't quite know how to say it. "You remember that card reading you did for me?" he finally said.

"I think I know what you're trying to say," Maddy said, and sniffled a little.

Ray didn't think she really knew, but then, who would ever imagine the truth? "Aw, I'm sorry," Ray said. "I wish we could...well, that we could be friends for a long time, and I'd have you over for...I know you probably don't watch baseball or hockey or anything, but..."

She was nodding, her glossy hair bobbing a little so that it hid and then revealed her features, once, twice, three times. "You're going back to where you came from."

That startled him. "You know where that is?"

She shook her head. "Not really. But I can feel that it isn't...here. Someplace better."

"I don't know about that," he said, smiling a little. "But I got to, because it's my real life, my real self, you know." He shook his head. "Yeah. That sounds screwy."

She lifted her shoulders, and Ray could see she didn't really understand after all, but there was so much trust in her big, dark eyes.

Ray knew he should shut up right there, but he just couldn't make himself do it. He couldn't stand the thought of her bumping into Rae somewhere in Chicago and having Rae not _know_ her. Hell, they _would_ bump into each other, of course, because Rae would have to finish up the case; she'd probably even have to testify at the trial, which Ray didn't know how Rae was going to manage that, seeing as she hadn't actually experienced any of it. But she was smart, and between her and Fraser, he trusted they'd figure something out.

"Look," he said. "I want you to remember this. I will never forget you, ever. But there's gonna be a Detective Rae Kowalski here in Chicago who might not be...well, the me you know. You know? She might be more...uh, less...oh, hell."

She turned her hand around in his so that she could squeeze it, and now she was comforting _him._ "Would it help if I say I won't ever forget you, either, Ray, and I promise not to hold it against you when I see you again?"

"That'll help a lot, yeah. Look, I'm not Rae. I mean, I _am_ Ray, just not R-A-E Rae. I'm St...Stanley Raymond Kowalski. I go by Ray."

"I know, Ray," she said.

"Yeah, but..." He stopped. It was like he could suddenly hear the Y at the end.

She smiled. "Ray with a Y, I know. I've been saying it that way all along."

Ray swallowed hard. Maddy was something else. He had a feeling that Rae would like her. "When you run into Rae, you could...you could talk to her. She'll be cool, I think. And Fraser will remember you, of course, 'cause he remembers everything." Ray nodded over towards the door, where Fraser was standing, hat in hand respectfully, and Dief was nosing around hoping for any stray food anybody might have left unattended. "Fraser will be the same." Though, really, Ray was going out on a limb there, because if it could happen once...

Yeah. He'd better not go down that road, because if it ever happened again in his life, to _anyone_, and he found out about it, he'd probably be spending the rest of his days in the loony bin, and then it wouldn't really matter which body he was in.

"I'll miss you," Maddy said after a moment, and she spilled over again, big wet tears running down her cheeks, and it was the first time Ray had ever seen her with her mascara messed up. It was a sight he didn't want to see ever again.

Then he realized he _wouldn't_ see it ever again, and that choked him up, too.

"Maybe there's another you where I'm...going," he said without thinking. "I could look you up."

She smiled through her tears. "I'd like that," she said, but still with that look on her face that said she really didn't understand, but was willing to go with Ray on it anyway. That was real friendship, as far as Ray was concerned.

"Me, too," he said.

"Maybe I'm a guy there," she said. "Or a real girl." She wiped her face delicately with the edge of her hand.

"Oh, Maddy. You're a real girl _here_. You are the realest. You are a hundred percent, solid-gold, real girl. I, um...I _know_ girls."

Hell, he knew them a lot better now than he used to.

"Me, on the other hand," he said, "I'm going back to be the male me, but...after this, I gotta wonder about stuff, you know? Like how much of who I think I am is tied up in my gender and how much is just_ me._" He stopped himself. "Yeah. That sounds pretty screwy, huh?"

"Not to me," Maddy said. "I think about that stuff all the time." She pulled him into a hug and he patted her back awkwardly.

After a moment, Maddy let him go and smiled at him even though her eyes were filling up again. "Besides, I've always known who you are. I knew who you were the morning we found Charla, when you came into the club."

"You did? Who was I?" Because he couldn't have said for certain, if you'd asked him that morning.

"Oh, Ray. You were my guardian angel."

  
So Ray cried a little all the way back to the apartment, which was kind of embarrassing, not to mention wet. But Fraser was driving, because the doc hadn't okayed Ray doing that yet, and Fraser calmly handed Ray his handkerchief like always, and Ray realized he hadn't really cried any more as Rae than he'd done as his male self, so he should probably just get over thinking it had anything to do with gender.

He was going to have to reorganize his thinking a lot more, when he got home.

And he _was_ going home; he knew that now. He didn't know _how_ he knew it, but it was like one of his hunches. There was no point in trying to figure out where they came from. The only important thing was to go with them, and that was easy and normal enough, like dancing to familiar music.

Outside, a warm rain was coming down, beading up a little on the car windows and turning the city streets grayer and softer, as though he was already starting to see the landscape from far away.

They stopped at a light, and he told Fraser, "I feel like I'm leaving soon, I feel kind of pulled back...home. I don't think I can describe it. Kind of like just knowing the tide's going out again."

Fraser nodded thoughtfully, his gaze locked on Ray, and his eyes were big and blue and...a little sad, which was weird. Because Fraser was desperate for his Rae to return, of course he was, and yet...it sure looked like he wished Ray could stay as well. And then the light turned green, and Fraser turned back to the road and got them moving again.

And it hit Ray: here, he could have what he wanted. He could have Fraser, Fraser's love. He could have _kids,_ his own kids and Fraser's kids, and Ray could be the one to decide. He could have everything he'd wanted—all he had to do was stay here. Be Rae. For the rest of his life.

And Ray knew he couldn't do that. He couldn't, wouldn't do that to Rae; it was her life, and she had a right to it.

But if Rae hadn't been in the picture, or if Ray had to stay here through no choice of his own, he could maybe live with it. In four weeks, he'd gotten pretty comfortable in Rae's skin, considering. He could maybe even convince Fraser he _was_ Rae, that it had all been a hallucination. God knew, Fraser _wanted_ that to be true, and it was frighteningly easy to convince people of stuff they wanted to be true.

But it _wouldn't_ be true. It wouldn't be _Ray._

And Ray couldn't be anything but himself.

Balance having everything he'd ever wanted against being himself, who he really was, and he'd pick Stanley Raymond Kowalski every time.

Had to.

Because you couldn't run away from who you really were.

And Ray had to admit, the life he had was already pretty good. He hadn't felt that way about his life in a long time, he thought, not when he was keeping up a constant refrain of _Stella left me, I suck, Dad's not speaking to me, my freak partner's better at everything, I suck..._et cetera, et cetera.

But now he had some perspective. Hell, he had the long view from another universe, a whole other _life_ that he might've had and didn't, because of some chemical thingy that happened before he was even born.

And he was okay with it. All of it. Being Rae for a month and being Ray Kowalski for thirty-seven years and counting...it was all good.

He was going back to his male body, his messy bachelor apartment, his own Fraser, partner and friend...and whether or not Ray ever talked Fraser into anything more was not the point. Living his own life the best way he could, appreciating the good stuff and letting the rest roll off his back, that was _living._ Ray figured it was about time to start.

  
When they got into the house, Ray started jittering around, picking things up and then putting them down. Dief snorted at him and went over and scratched at the sliding door, which stopped Ray in his tracks for a moment, because when you were boring the wolf, you should probably just give up.

Fraser let Dief out and then came over and asked if Ray was feeling all right and whether his throat hurt.

Fact was, Ray hadn't thought about his throat in a while, though it probably still looked pretty awful under his collar.

"Nah, I'm good. It's a lot better. I just...I just realized I feel like I'm going on a trip and I should be packing or something."

Fraser nodded, and his eyes had this faraway look, like he could see all the way to the Yukon, or even maybe to where Rae was. "It's a journey of the soul, Ray, not of the body. The only thing a person can take along is his good character and..." he looked away, then looked back, licked his lower lip. "...and the love of his friends."

"Yeah. I get that." Ray touched his arm. "And don't get me wrong: I'm going to be glad to be me again, but it's going to be hard leaving you. Especially with me not knowing what I'm going back to."

"You're going back to your own life, Ray. I know Rae. She won't have done anything that would harm you."

"Yeah, I know. I just, I'm thinking...what if he don't want me? My Fraser."

"He will."

"How can you be so sure?" Ray asked. Fraser in any incarnation was always so damn sure about everything, but Ray always found himself asking Fraser—both Frasers—that question.

"I think he's straight," Ray said. "I don't think he looks at guys."

"He looks at _you_."

"You can't know that."

"I know that _I_ do."

"I'm female! I mean, at the moment."

Fraser shook his head. "Not really. That is, a doctor would tell you that you are female. But your maleness...it does show through. The way you walk, the way you hold yourself. Your...reactions."

"They're male?"

"Masculine, perhaps," Fraser said. "I don't know. They're just slightly different from Rae's; perhaps that's most of it. Perhaps it's that you grew up negotiating the world in a different body, and of course having people react differently to you than they do to Rae."

"Yeah. I got a lot of that, this past month."

"But the difference, however slight, was enough to convince Dino. And Maddy. And your audiences."

Ray sighed. "Jeez. I never stopped to think. Poor Rae."

"Why?"

"They were already calling her a bull dyke before I showed up here, Ben. Creepy other cops were doing it. I don't even want to know what the bad guys say."

"Rae has always dealt with a certain amount of prejudice on the force. Most women detectives do."

"Yeah, well, now that they've seen me, they're never gonna stop."

Fraser tugged him gently into his arms and kissed him. "I don't devote a lot of thought to such people, and I don't think you should, either. Rae will handle any problems with her usual grace and aplomb."

Ray burst out laughing. When he could catch his breath, he said. "She's me and she handles it with grace and whatsis? I think not."

"Well, she does."

"Threatening to kick them in the head is grace?"

"Everything's relative," Fraser said, and he wasn't hiding the twinkle in his eye.

Ray kissed him back for a few minutes, and, wow...he sure hoped he was going to talk his own Fraser into at least kissing him, because he might just be developing an addiction to it.

Eventually, though, he remembered that he did after all have some preparations to make, and he pulled out of Fraser's arms reluctantly. He didn't need to organize his notes on the case; Fraser would take care of that. He couldn't really write a diary about the stuff he'd done in the past month, either. But he wanted to give Rae _something_ besides a bruised throat and a confused Fraser, and the least he could do would be to help her feel more comfortable testifying in the case.

"I gotta leave her a note, Ben." Ray found some scrap paper in Rae's rolltop desk—same as his, only better taken care of—and a pen, and started scribbling.

_Rae—_

_I don't know if you're gonna need this, but since you didn't hear the confession I thought you should know a few things in case you have to testify._

_One, Dino admitted to me he killed the girls, all three. Fraser knows the details, but he wasn't in the room when Dino confessed._

_B, Dino smothered Charla with her own pillow after drugging her with kava and barbiturates, see Fraser for the details, which I made Fraser memorize them, Dino's exact words and everything._

_I don't know if you're gonna be able to get him for the murders, but the attempted murder of you, i.e., me, is a shoe-in. I'm sorry about the bruises and stuff. Nail his balls to the wall for me, Rae._

_C. Frannie is real nice if you get to know her. Pretend she's your sister, it could work._

_And thanks._

_Ray_

  
Fraser smiled when he read the note, and said, "Don't worry about the case. We'll do our best."

"I know you will, Ben. I believe in you." He always had, actually.

Fraser's eyes looked suspiciously wet. "You're so like her. Perhaps I won't have to miss you after all, Ray. You'll be inside Rae, where you have always been until now. Perhaps that's what this whole experience has been. You're a part of her who has come to the fore during this time for some unknown reason."

Ray considered that. "I don't know, Fraser. It don't feel that way to me. You're Rae's husband, you're my Fraser that might have been, but ...he's..." Ray couldn't finish, because there wasn't really a way to put into words all the things his original Fraser was to him. Any more than he could really express what _this_ Fraser, Rae's Fraser, was to him now. He was Rae's Fraser. He was somebody Ray loved. He was Ben.

"All right," Fraser said. "I don't pretend to know much about these matters, no matter how often my father attempts to explain them to me."

"He really, you know, appears to you?" Before this experience, Ray probably would have thought Fraser was putting him on if he'd told him something like that, but now he just found it interesting. After all, he wasn't really in a position to criticize.

"Yes. I usually see him fairly often, though he hasn't been around this month. Perhaps I'm not meant to have a clear answer about...about Rae and you." He sighed. "I'm sure Dad would have an opinion. He always does."

"Wow." Ray didn't know what to say to that. "I'd have a hard time with the whole ghost thing if I wasn't, you know, something out of science fiction myself, right now."

"Buck Frobisher has seen him, too," Fraser said, a little defensively.

"Who?"

"His former partner, a sergeant in the RCMP."

"Is he crazy?"

"Frobisher? No, of course not...well, possibly."

Ray laughed. "S'okay. _You _are not crazy, Benton Fraser. And I believe you."

"You do?"

Ray looked down at his body, looked back up at Fraser, and raised his eyebrows.

Fraser laughed like he couldn't help it, and it was a beautiful sound. Ray couldn't help joining in.

  
They had dinner together—spaghetti, which Ben made, and which was easy on Ray's throat—and after dinner Ray pawed through Rae's music collection and put something throbby and Latin on and danced to it, while Ben cleaned up the kitchen.

A couple of times, Ray thought about dragging Ben over and trying to get him to dance with him, but then he thought that that was Rae's place and he should leave that for her. And, yeah, in bed with Ben was her place, too, but he'd kind of burned that bridge already.

They got ready for bed on the early side, both tired, but not all that ready to sleep, which made sense.

Ray stripped off and stood in front of the mirror with a weird sense of déjà vu, remembering the first morning, when he'd stood there looking at the stranger he'd become.

"Goodbye, Rae," he couldn't help whispering to his reflection.

Ben came up behind him, same as the first time, and put his arms around Ray from behind, and rested his chin on Ray's shoulder. Ray drew a deep breath and let it out as a long sigh. He could get used to this, he thought, but he'd better not expect to.

Because this wasn't his. It was Rae's.

Ray figured she had to be pretty desperate by now to get back to it. He touched his breast, his cheek, just like he'd done that first morning. She really was lovely. It was still so strange to look in the mirror and see a female body, but after a month of dancing in this body, he moved a lot more confidently in it.

He wondered how much of this he was going to remember.

Fraser tightened his arms around him. "Don't worry, Ray," he said. "I've got a feeling everything will be all right."

"You got a hunch?"

Fraser nodded, his chin warm on Ray's shoulder. "Yeah, I think that's what it is."

So Ray got in bed. He could force himself to lie mostly still, but his mind was another matter. It spun in circles of_ what if, what if, what if...? _He reached across the covers for Fraser's hand, but instead Fraser pulled him close and held him.

"Full moon's at, what, four a.m.?" Ray asked.

Fraser nodded, his hair soft against Ray's cheek. "Close enough."

"Do you think I should be awake for this?"

"I don't know," Fraser said, pulling back to arm's length, searching Ray's face like he might find clues there. "You weren't, the first time, so perhaps not."

"Actually, the first thing I remember is being in bed with you making love to me." He smiled. "Which was a pretty great welcome to the universe, actually." Ray reached for his hand again, caught it this time. "You gonna miss me after?"

"Yes, Ray." His big hand was warm on Ray's.

"You'll have Rae."

"Yes. And you'll have the other me."

"Yeah. Partner and friend."

"And more," Fraser said.

"Don't know about that," Ray said.

"He'll see reason," Fraser said. "I'm stubborn, I admit, but I can eventually learn to bend." He rubbed his eyebrow.

Ray thought about when he'd slugged Fraser on the docks, then got Fraser to slug him back. He thought about buddy breathing and steering submarines and him and Fraser taking down the bad guy on the fake ghost ship with eye contact, a couple of hand signals, and a Hail Mary pass. Mostly he thought about Fraser _finally_ twigging to the whole partnership deal after Ray put everything on the line to get it across.

"I love him, Ben."

"I know," Fraser said.

"And you, too. Love you both."

"I'm a very fortunate man," Fraser said. "First to have Rae in my life, and then to have this opportunity to know another side of her—you. To love her as a woman and as a man...is extraordinary. I find myself envying your Benton Fraser."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Fraser echoed softly.

Ray let go Fraser's hand and propped himself up just far enough to kiss Fraser, real gently, on the lips. He pulled back a little, but stayed close enough that Ben's face wasn't blurry at all, even without glasses. "You _are_ fortunate," he said, shooting him a grin.

"Oh, I know," Fraser said real seriously, like Ray wasn't half-yanking his chain.

"Nah, what I mean is, she wants kids, right?"

"Right."

"You gonna do it? You gonna give her that?"

"I, ah...I hadn't entirely...well, I hope I'll have the courage."

"You will," Ray said, fixing Fraser with his best cop stare, the one that got the bad guys quaking in their shoes.

"How can you know that? How can you be so sure?" Fraser said half under his breath.

The answer to that question between them was obvious. "Because I know you," Ray said.

"I'm your partner and your friend," Fraser replied. Yeah, he was on the same page.

"Right. And at the moment, my _husband._" Ray smiled. "Which, you will notice I've stopped freaking out about that."

"It's quite refreshing," Fraser said, a twinkle creeping back into his eye.

"Yeah, but there's more. See, I _know_ you're gonna make a great dad because I know Benton Fraser. I know the Benton Fraser of two universes now, and they are both good guys. They are the best of the best of the good guys."

He could have sworn Fraser was blushing a little by now, but it was hard to see in the low light, and it didn't matter anyway, because what Ray was saying was _important,_ dammit. "I would bet you if I knew a million of them, I would find they are _all_ good guys. I _know_ you, you get that?"

Fraser was looking back at him wide-eyed. "Ray, I..."

But Ray was on a roll. He had the evidence on his side, and there was no point in anybody arguing with him, so he plowed on: "And one thing I know about all Benton Frasers everywhere is that they don't do anything half-assed. When they're in, they're in. And buddy...you are _in._ You love Ray Kowalski." He grinned. "Spell that any way you want."

"I do," Fraser said. "Love you, all of you. Er. However many there are."

"Right," Ray said. "You love her and you know she wants kids, she wants _your _kids, and you secretly want them, too, and you are gonna make her a mom."

Fraser swallowed hard. Then again. He looked Ray in the eye. And sighed. "You're right," he finally admitted. "I _am_ going to go through with it." His tongue swiped over his lower lip and disappeared again. "And I'm utterly terrified."

"You're supposed to be terrified," Ray said. "'Cause it _matters,_ you got that?"

"Yes," Fraser said, his voice husky and intense. "It does matter."

"Anyway," Ray said, "After this month? I think you proved you can handle anything."

Fraser looked startled for a moment, and then his face just kind of...cleared. "You've, ah, you've got a point."

And Ray couldn't help grinning all over his face, because it wasn't every day he won an argument with Benton Fraser, maybe not even since the _Henry Allen_, and this one...this argument was the one he had lost to Stella again and again. And Stella was a champion debater, that was for damn sure, but she didn't have anything on Fraser.  
And Ray had just won his point with _Benton Fraser._

Which mean Ray was the _man_, he really was.

No matter what he currently looked like.

  
He couldn't help grinning all over his face. "Good," he said. "Good, 'cause I want you to be happy. I want you and Rae to be happy. You guys are going to be great parents."

"I hope so."

"You are, and you're going to move to Canada with her and raise those kids and you're going to be happy." He pointed a finger at Fraser, putting him on notice. "I don't want to have to come back here and kick your ass to straighten you out on that."

Fraser's eyes went suspiciously shiny. "I wish I could...hear from you. Know that you'll be happy also."

Ray's throat threatened to close up on him. There really wouldn't be a way to check in. He grabbed Fraser's hand and pulled him close. "I'm sure as hell going to try, Ben. So you're just going to have to trust me."

"Oh, I do, Ray."

Ray smiled at that. "Hey, maybe Rae will know. Maybe some kind of telepathic thing, you know. This whole thing is straight from the SciFi Channel, so why not?"

Fraser was looking at him with a wide grin, almost like he'd just materialized in the middle of a perfect snowfield and already had his happy future, a cozy little cabin and Rae and a couple of smart, difficult, wonderful kids.

"You've been calling me Ben tonight. I've noticed you've been doing that, lately."

"Yeah."

"But we're not...I'm not..."

"Yeah, I know. You're not really my Fraser. But he's not 'Ben' to me. And I don't think he's going to be. Not after you. You're Ben, he's Fraser. I can kind of keep that straight." He thought for a second. "Unless I'm stark raving crazy, but if I am, don't tell me."

"Understood."

"Make love to me?" Ray said.

Fraser didn't hesitate at all this time. "Yes."

 

 


	14. Falling

Ray was leaping, flying, falling like from a plane out over snowy ice fields and mountains and crevasses and he didn't know what the hell a crevasse was, but the word was there, lodged in his mind, falling through snow, falling through years, falling through stars.

Falling through dark sky, a spatter of rain, some clouds, then clear, bright sky, and the mountain crags were skyscrapers, and the crevasses were the familiar streets and alleys of Chicago, and he was falling, falling, into a patch of green.

And he wasn't even scared, which that was weird. So, another dream.

When he hit, he didn't even really feel it; it was _like falling into a duvet,_ he heard Fraser's voice say, and Ray didn't remember what a duvet was, wait, wait...yeah, his mom had something she called a duvet. Oh, yeah: something fluffy you put on a bed.

He thought he heard Fraser say something about turtles. Weird fucking dream.

Bed. He was sleeping, and someone was shaking him, trying to wake him up.

Strong hand on his shoulder—Fraser.

Fraser, waking him, again. Not kissing him this time, but you couldn't have everything.

Ray needed to wallow, he needed a serious wallow, followed by about a gallon of coffee, but he got the message Fraser wasn't going to give up on the shoulder shaking any time soon, so he blew out a big sigh and forced his eyes open.

And he was looking up, up into blue. Not the sky, that was still dingy before-dawn black, but something much bluer, much better—Fraser's eyes. Blue like the lake on a gorgeous day, blue and deep and concerned, and—from the lines etching themselves in Fraser's forehead—maybe even worried.

"S'okay. S'okay, Frase, I'm...just...sleepy, can't shake it off. Gimme a minute." He knuckled his eyes, which felt a little strange. Big knobby knuckles. He rubbed the back of his hand over the side of his face and—it scratched! Scratchy stubble.

He didn't feel much like a detective at the moment, but even in his sorry state, he could put together the clues. Big knobby knuckles plus stubble plus...

He couldn't help it. He didn't even think about it, he didn't think about looking around to see if anyone besides Fraser was here, he didn't think about how it might make Fraser blush, he didn't think about anything at all. He just grabbed his crotch.

And felt his dick there, under his jeans, his dick, his balls, heavy and solid and _there,_ thank _God..._

...and his dick was twitching under his hand, happy to get touched, even with his jeans in the way, happy to see Fraser, _his_ Fraser, it had to be, and, yeah, Fraser was blushing a little bit, now, and Fraser was clearing his throat and stammering, "Ray, there's a lady present."

Ray reluctantly let go of himself, but he couldn't help chuckling a little at the same time, because it was insane, all of it, and because he was so damned happy to have his scruffy, scarred, _male_ body back, and just as important, _his Fraser._

His chuckle turned into a full-out laugh. He laughed so hard he had to double over and hold his stomach.

"Ray, are you all right?"

"Never better, Fraser," Ray choked out when he finally could. "Just struck me funny. There's a lady present and for the first time in a month it ain't me."

Fraser smiled. Fraser _grinned_. Ray had never seen such a huge smile on Fraser's face.

"Ray," Fraser said, like it was the most important thing in the whole universe to have Ray back, the right Ray, and Ray pretty much felt that way, too.

He looked up into those big blue eyes. "In the flesh," he said, grinning wickedly. "The right flesh, this time. God, that was a trip and a half."

"I'm sure it was," Fraser said, but he was blushing again now, and Ray remembered, oh yeah, Fraser said somebody else was here.

So Ray sat up. He was on the grass, in what was obviously one of Chicago's zillion parks. There was a little sound from a few feet away, and Ray looked over. Yup, there was the lady Fraser mentioned. Ray squinted. His neighbor Carol?

Great, his neighbor'd seen him grabbing his crotch. _Classy move, Ray._ He couldn't quite meet her eyes. He probably blushed some, too.

She didn't seem surprised or grossed out, though. "It's all right," she said. "In your place, I'd have done the same."

Ray looked at Fraser, astonished. "She knows? She knows what happened to me?"

"Yes. She...Miss Lembo was responsible for the transference."

Ray's jaw dropped. After a minute, he realized he probably looked like an idiot, and he shut his mouth.

Jeez. He'd always thought Carol was a little woo-woo sometimes, with her incense and stuff, but she was okay to watch football with on the odd Sunday when Fraser wasn't available, and she was a decent cook. But he sure hadn't expected to see her here, in the middle of some park, in the middle of the night, with him and Fraser and a bunch of weird voodoo crap laid out on a rock.

And the last thing he'd ever have dreamed up would be that mousy little Carol could have sent Ray packing to another universe.

Ray squinted at the stuff on the rock. Whoa, was that the feather from Ray's dreamcatcher? The dreamcatcher that Carol had borrowed for her photography project?

She obviously saw where he was looking. "Please don't be mad," she said. "Rae already..." She hung her head.

"Threatened to kick your ass, I'm sure," Ray said. "So why'd you do it?" There was no point in questioning her by the book; he didn't know how the hell he would press charges for body-switching someone across universes, anyway.

"I didn't do it to you on purpose," she said. "It wasn't intended for you at all. It was me I was trying to change."

"I don't get it."

"I wanted to be a man," she said. "It's not right I'm stuck being a woman."

That would've rocked Ray back on his heels if he hadn't already been sitting on the ground. Which was kind of damp, come to think of it. He rolled to his knees, and Fraser gave him a hand and yanked him up to standing with one strong pull. His hand in Ray's was warm and firm and, whoa, a little tight, even. He was telling Ray something with that grip.

Ray understood. He squeezed back, hard. "I missed you, too, buddy," he said under his breath.

Fraser squeezed his hand again, and blushed, and slowly let go.

Ray stepped over to Carol. "So on this side it was you? It wasn't the, you know, hermaphro-whatsits, the drag queens at _Dino's Girls_?"

"Who?" Fraser said.

"Dino. Drag impre—impress—you know. Owns a place up in Boystown, puts on drag shows."

Fraser raised both eyebrows. "I don't know of any 'Dino.'"

"I know Dina," Carol said quietly. "But she doesn't own the place. She just performs there."

"She? She's not a guy?"

"Well..." Carol shrugged. "She goes by Dina. She's a drag performer. I think she's a guy under the dress, but who really knows?"

"You got a point," Ray said. "The dick don't make the man."

Carol looked startled. "Huh. I never thought of it that way."

"It's worth considering, Miss Lembo." Fraser's voice was real soft. "You could be anything you want to be, but first you need to accept yourself as you are."

She took a deep breath, folded her arms in front of her as if she was cold. "I don't know," she said after a minute. "I don't think I know how to do that." She directed a challenging stare at Ray. "How did you do it? I mean, when you were a...woman?"

He shrugged. "Put one foot in front of the other, just like I do as a guy." He thought about the dance number and almost laughed. "You know what they say. Ginger did everything Fred did, except backwards and in heels."

"I know that," she said. "The world doesn't really believe it."

"Only thing that's important is for you to believe it," Ray said.

  
Ray got his eagle feather back from Carol, and then they saw her safely to her car and headed home. Well, straight to Ray's apartment, anyway, but he just informed Fraser that was where they were going, and Fraser didn't make even a token protest. In fact, Fraser offered to drive, but Fraser in any universe drove like an old lady on her weekly trip to church, so Ray nixed that idea.

Anyway, he felt fine. He guessed Rae had the sore throat now, poor kid. Ray had...well, it was a little strange; mostly he felt really good, but he had a slightly sore dick, not enough to be annoying, just enough to make him notice. Maybe it was just the feeling of having his dick back that he was noticing. The weird feeling would probably wear off pretty soon. He'd had this body for over thirty-seven years, after all.

It also seemed a little strange to have his gun back in the usual spot under his left arm, and for the front of his shirt to cling to hard muscle instead of soft breasts.

Pretty amazing, how a month of being different could make the normal things seem queer.

Fraser was pretty quiet in the car, and Ray was okay with that. Ray figured he'd play it cool, because him and Fraser had a hell of a debriefing to do, if his own experience was any gauge. They were going to have a lot of questions for each other: "What was it like?" and "What was Rae like?" and "What was the other Benton Fraser like?" and "Did Rae do anything as me that I'm gonna have to undo?"

Ray figured that last one could wait for the next time they went into the station, but he wasn't that worried, because outside of maybe pissing Frannie off, Rae probably had been a hell of a lot nicer than he usually was. He knew from Ben that she didn't go around regularly threatening to kick perps and the occasional wiseass cop in the head.

Ray slid the car smoothly into its spot under the carport and killed the engine. He started to open the door to get out, but Fraser grabbed his arm.

And then Fraser seemed to notice that he'd grabbed Ray's arm, and he got this strange look on his face and let go.

"I, er, should be getting back to the Consulate," Fraser said.

That threw Ray for a loop, and then it hit him like a sucker punch: this wasn't Ben, who knew what Ray'd just gone through, had gotten him through it.

This was Fraser, _Ray's _Fraser, and for him, none of that stuff had happened. In fact, he'd been here in Ray's original life with _Rae_, and Ray still had no idea what had happened in the month he'd been away.

What that boiled down to was Ray, Square One all over again.

At least he wasn't trying to navigate an unfamiliar life and body this time. But that didn't mean it was going to be clear sailing. He had a lot to process, and he didn't think he could take being alone while he did it. He probably needed sleep, but...shit, did he even have time? It was morning; it was Saturday, but wasn't it the one Saturday a month he pulled duty?

"Wait, am I on duty in a few hours?" he asked Fraser.

"Not today. Rae realized you might not have had time to sleep. She secured Lt. Welsh's permission to take a personal day."

"Good thinking. I hope Ben thinks of that, because I didn't."

 "I thought of it, actually, so I expect he will have done the same." Fraser cleared his throat. "Ray, I'm sure you could use some rest. I should go."

"No!" Ray couldn't bear the thought of going to sleep alone. The last time he'd gone to sleep alone, he'd awakened in the wrong body. "Fraser, please, don't go. Help me with this."

"Ray, I don't think..."

"Please, Fraser. In the other...um, place. It wasn't exactly like I told Carol. Not just dancing backwards as fast as I could. You—I mean Ben. The other you. He got me through it. Or I'd be in a loony bin somewhere."

"I...Ray, God, I'm so—"

"Don't say it. Don't say you're sorry about anything, because none of this was your fault."

Fraser hung his head so far that his chin touched his collarbone.

"Don't," Ray said, even more forcefully.

"All right," Fraser mumbled into his collar.

Ray blew out a sigh. So maybe this debriefing wasn't going to be that easy. Still, there was no point in giving up before he got started, even if Fraser did look like he was going to blow a gasket or something.

"Come on," Ray said. "I'll fix you a coffee or a bark tea or something. Do I still got bark tea?" He'd actually gone out and bought some after the Botrelle case, but he couldn't remember how much of it had still been in the canister the last time he'd been in his own apartment. "Jeez, I haven't gone grocery shopping in a month."

"Your apartment has been kept well supplied," Fraser said.

"Oh, yeah? Thanks for checking up on that for me."

Fraser just nodded, but then he added in that same weirdly subdued voice, "A woman has been living there, after all."

"Rae."

Fraser nodded again, but his chin was still way too close to his chest. Sheesh.

"That doesn't make any sense, Fraser," Ray started to say, but then he stopped himself and bit his lip. He couldn't look at Fraser hanging his head and still take him to task for making a dumb comment like that. Because, yeah, it was a dumb comment. Just because she was a woman didn't mean she'd be good at keeping the place stocked up.

But it wasn't half as bad as the kind of thing Ray might've said before he actually lived as a woman, so he had to cut Fraser some slack.

Whatever was bothering Fraser, Ray figured bark tea couldn't hurt, and maybe once he had some of that stuff in him, he'd open up.

He got out of the car and motioned with his head for Fraser to follow. Fraser moved kind of slow, but he'd clearly given in, so Ray didn't sweat it.

When they got up to the apartment, Ray looked around like he was seeing the place for the first time. It looked weird and different to him, but that was only because he'd been away so long. It seemed a little neater than he usually kept it, but that wasn't a surprise, since he already knew Rae was slightly neater than him. So maybe it did go with being a woman, just a little—or being raised as a woman; maybe that was it. At least, Barbara Kowalski's daughter, the woman that he might've been if he...

Yeah. Probably he shouldn't start thinking along those lines, because he was going to have enough trouble keeping the nightmares at bay as it was. If you could get beamed into another universe this easy, what was to keep it from happening again? Every single morning when he woke up he was going to be grabbing his dick and looking around his bedroom to make sure everything was there that was supposed to be there, the whole nine yards.

Jeez. He hadn't been kidding when he told Fraser he needed his help. Even just to distract him. And then what was going to happen when Fraser left and went back to the Consulate to sleep?

It was going to be hell sleeping alone again, that was for sure. Maybe he could talk Fraser into a scout-troop campout.

He dropped his keys on the counter and turned to see Fraser still standing just inside the doorway, like he wasn't sure whether he should come all the way inside.

He went over to him, looked him in the eyes, and reached around him to shut and bolt the door.

"Frase, it's really me," he said. He scratched awkwardly at his neck. "I kind of don't have any idea how to convince you of that, though. It's weird, but it was probably easier to convince the other Fraser I wasn't her."

"Really? How did you accomplish that?"

"He saw me try to pee standing up."

"Oh, dear."

"Yeah. It didn't work so well. But after a month I guess Rae probably figured that out, so I guess my peeing skills wouldn't particularly impress you, huh?" He tried to make it a joke.

"I know it's you, Ray. I can tell."

Ray couldn't keep from grinning at that. "Really?"

Fraser nodded. Even smiled a little, happy to see Ray, that much was clear. He'd missed him. But the smile didn't totally reach his eyes, and Ray figured that made sense, because the whole thing was complicated. It wasn't like Ray'd been away on an assignment or something. He'd been _here,_ doing his usual partner/liaison thing with Fraser_..._

...except it hadn't been _him_.

"Could you tell when she first showed up that she wasn't me?"

"Oh. Well no, I couldn't. Until she told me. Even then I required some convincing; you're really very alike. But in the ensuing month I got to know her well..." Fraser coughed. "Ah...and I began to perceive the differences."

"So what was she like?"

"I don't know how to answer that question. She was you...almost. Well, not really. She looked like you, obviously. But she didn't...she wasn't..."

"C'mon. You can tell me."

Fraser sighed. "Well, she wasn't as belligerent, for one thing."

"Huh?"

"She wasn't as quick to anger, either personally or professionally."

"A kinder, gentler me, huh?" For some reason, that struck Ray as funny , and he chuckled.

Fraser shook his head. "I wouldn't say that. 'Milder,' perhaps. I'm sure your, er, masculine swagger wouldn't have worked for her in her job or her personal life, so she simply never cultivated that trait. She didn't model herself after male movie policemen."

"Oh. No Bullitt for her, yeah. I get that."

"And she was, she...well, she'd been married to the other Benton Fraser. She'd known him longer, as well."

"Yeah," Ray said quietly. "Right." He wanted to kick himself. He knew she was better than him; he'd lived her life for a month.

He turned away to find the bark tea, and had to search for a minute or two before he found it—in the wrong place. He filled the kettle and put it on to heat and then looked around. Stuff in the kitchen was moved around, in different places from where he used to keep it.

He found the coffee canister lined up perfectly next to the tea one, opened it and sniffed. Whoa—fresh. Apparently there were some advantages to having sublet his life to a woman for a month. He pulled the coffee machine over and started making coffee the good way. This discussion was going to take a whole pot, especially since it wasn't even full daylight outside, and he was way too wired to be able to go back to sleep.

Once he'd got the machine going and it was giving off seriously delicious coffee smells, he pulled a kitchen towel off the handle of the stove and sniffed it. Clean. And it'd been folded neatly, too. He shuddered a bit, cracked his neck and then tossed the towel on the counter.

He could have the place looking normal inside of a couple hours.

"Is something wrong with the kitchen, Ray?" Fraser said in that voice that was still too careful, almost worried-sounding.

"Huh? No, just a little too neat." Ray cracked a grin. "My mother must've loved having a daughter."

"I'm afraid it's I who...ah, well. Never mind," Fraser said.

"Come again?"

"I'm responsible for the kitchen being, er, slightly out of order. So to speak. I apologize."

"You came over and cleaned for her? Whoa." The water had boiled. He found that weird tea ball thing Fraser used to steep it, and put the tea in it. Two teaspoons of roots and twigs, just the way Fraser liked it. Then he retrieved the kettle and a mug and poured Fraser's tea.

He pushed it over to him.

And only then did he notice Fraser was _blushing._

And it hit Ray like a nine-millimeter slug in a Kevlar vest: Fraser'd been in love with her.

Why else would a guy come over and _clean_? Even a woman wouldn't do it unless she was trying to make time with a guy, right? Anybody who wasn't your mother—or wasn't getting paid—just wouldn't do it, no way, no how.

But Fraser had done it for Rae.

Jesus.

He sagged back against the counter, whacking his elbow in the process. Pain shot up his arm, bright and hot as fire, and he swore, grabbed his elbow with his good hand and tried to ease it.

Fraser flinched in his direction, but didn't say anything, like he knew it would be stupid to ask Ray if he was all right, because he could fucking _see_ that Ray was all right, Ray was just in pain here, he had some pain. Pain that meant nothing, that made no sense, because it was just a nerve getting smacked when it had no right to be.

Ray's nerves were too damn close to the surface; always had been.

He gasped for a little extra breath and tried to make his words come out normal. "So, uh. Okay. You obviously had a real thing for her. I get that."

Fraser's tongue flicked out over his lower lip and disappeared. His knuckles whitened on the handle of his tea mug. "Ray, I'm sorry, it wasn't...I—I do have a confession to make, but...truly no idea how to begin."

"Yeah," Ray said, holding up a hand. He felt like he was trying to catch his breath, like on the _Henry Allen_ when he'd almost drowned, like coming up and gasping for that first breath of air. Only at the moment he just felt like he was trying to breathe in water instead, thick and heavy and not what he needed. "Okay, yeah, you gotta give me a minute here."

He'd come back to his Fraser, the guy he wanted, the guy who was his real partner. The guy he needed, damn it, which was why he'd brought him up to the apartment at oh-dark-thirty instead of coming home alone to sleep off the month-long ordeal.

Ray'd gotten used to having Fraser around practically twenty-four seven. He'd needed him pretty much from Day One of this gig, as partner and friend, but now he sort of knew what it was like to have Fraser as his _partner_ partner, and he wantedthat, he wanted it like that first breath of air.

But it looked like Rae'd gotten it instead, in both universes. Because she was a woman? Or a better person than him?

Here, she hadn't lookedlike a woman, of course. But that didn't change the fact that she was. She was different from Ray. She was _milder._ She fucking folded the _kitchen towels._

In both universes, Ray could only have a taste of what he wanted. He got to be a stand-in for the real thing, which, wasn't that how this gig had started in the first place? He was a stand-in for Vecchio, he had been a stand-in for the upwardly mobile husband Stella wanted, and for a month he'd been a stand-in for the version of him that was a woman in another universe. And the thing was, he'd kept thinking it was all temporary, like sooner or later he was going to stop with the undercover thing and start being Stanley Raymond Kowalski again.

Whoever the hell _that_ was.

Ray's hand shook a little on the counter.

Fraser moved, just a little twitch again, but it caught Ray's attention. Fraser'd twitched toward him like he wanted to...well, if he was Ben, he would have taken Ray's hand, stilled the shaking, settled him down.

Ray remembered that warm, solid hand on his.

It hit Ray that Fraser would probably have done it for Rae, too.

Maybe he had.

Maybe he'd done it a lot.

Ray swallowed pretty hard. He opened his mouth to say something, not that he had any idea what to say: _It's okay, Fraser. You can hold my hand, too_? Or maybe, _I kind of got used to you—I mean _him_—holding my hand when I was like this, when I was a chick...._

The coffeemaker gurgled. Ray took a quick, deep breath. Air. He needed air. And coffee. He turned away to pour a mug of coffee, and looked around for the sugar bowl. Then remembered the last sugar bowl he'd seen, Maddy's, getting sealed into an evidence bag by one of the crime-scene investigators, and he set his cup down without the sugar and stared at it. Other people got used to drinking it black. He probably could, too.

"Here," Fraser said, and pushed over a box of Smarties that had apparently been sitting near the answering machine. Jeez, one thing out of place and Ray'd missed seeing it.

"Thanks." Ray slowly counted out six and dropped them in, watched them sink and leave muddy smears on the black surface of the coffee. It was really kind of disgusting-looking, and the candy tended to dissolve heavy and gritty in the coffee, which was kind of weird. But he'd been thirteen the morning of the Ellery bank robbery, the candy had actually been M&amp;Ms, and he'd thought disgusting and weird was funny and cool and worth it for pissing off the grownups. After that it had become a big joke; whenever they were out of sugar, and then sometimes when they weren't, Ray'd stir anything sweet into his coffee that he could find. But M&amp;Ms had always been his favorite.

Until Fraser came into his life like a big, red fresh start, and he'd brought Ray some Canadian Smarties on the second day of their partnership, and Ray'd been hooked.

Not just on the Smarties.

"She likes these too," Ray said.

"I know," Fraser said quietly.

"The Smarties/sugar thing kind of helped me and Ben...her Ben...solve the murders."

"Murders?"

"The _Dino's_ case. The drag queens thing."

"Oh."

"Case she was working on," Ray explained. "Solved it for her."

"I see. I'm sure she'll be most grateful."

Ray sighed. "So, um, she solve any of my outstandings?"

"Just the important one," Fraser said.

"Yeah." And yeah, something was seriously off here, because normally Fraser would now be asking for details of the case, he'd be asking how the Smarties and sugar provided clues, he'd be launching off into a long-assed explanation of sugar and cacao harvesting in South America.

But he wasn't. He was looking at Ray likeRay had just returned from darkest Peru (which he kind of had, but that wasn't important at this juncture). And he was looking a little sad, and a lot like he wasn't going to talk much at all, so Ray figured that confession Fraser wanted to make was pretty much that Fraser was going to be sad for a while, maybe a long time, because Rae had gone back to her own Ben Fraser, and Fraser was here with the reasonable facsimile.

Who wasn't really a good substitute after all.

Just like he hadn't been for Vecchio, but at least he'd been some kind of diversion. He'd been Fraser's friend and partner when Fraser desperately needed one.

He could still be that. He could still be that as long as Fraser wanted him around, which, since they really were buddies, and Fraser was down with that, Fraser was good at being a buddy and friend and partner...that might just be a very long time.

Which was good. That was good. Ray just needed a little time to shift gears.

It was pretty much time to haul himself up and stand on the clutch.

"Ray, I have to tell you..." Fraser started in again, sounding like the last thing he ever wanted to do was say this thing that Ray didn't really want to hear.

Ray held up a hand. "Not yet, just, um. Let me get some coffee in me, and uh..." He sucked down a mouthful, almost scalding hot, then another. It made a pleasant burn in his stomach, which was good. That was good, because he needed some kind of balance for the pain right next to it. There was a pain there, in there deep, somewhere in his chest, maybe not even a real pain, maybe something tougher than pain.

He couldn't stand there looking at Fraser and pretending things were normal, things were fine.

He set the mug down. "Just, I gotta..." He picked up the eagle feather from the counter where he'd thrown it with his keys. "Yeah, I gotta get my dreamcatcher back in one piece. Shouldn't have taken it apart in the first place. Maybe that was my first mistake, you know?" He tried to smile, make it a little joke, but he didn't feel much like laughing. His throat felt like he'd swallowed a rock the size of his fist, and it probably showed.

He went around the breakfast bar, headed for the bedroom.

"Ray." Fraser's voice sounded_ broken._

Ray stopped, but didn't look back. He gritted his teeth, because if he didn't, he was going to shout, sob, maybe punch something. He could only fix one thing at a time.

"I want to...I didn't mean to hurt you," Fraser said. "Let me help."

Ray shrugged. "Okay, since you made it." He knew Fraser didn't mean the dreamcatcher, but he couldn't talk about the rock in his throat, in his chest, not without losing his cool probably worse than he had after the Botrelle case. So he jerked his head toward the bedroom and let Fraser follow him.

Once there, he pulled the dreamcatcher out of the dresser drawer where he'd stowed it over a month ago. He handed it to Fraser along with the feather. "Can you tie it back on the way it was?"

Fraser swallowed hard, but he nodded and took the dreamcatcher and the feather and started fiddling with them. After a couple of minutes, he held the repaired dreamcatcher up for Ray to inspect: good as new. Then he toed off his shoes and then climbed up on the night table in his socks to fasten the thing back up over Ray's bed.

Ray spotted him with a hand on his back as he climbed down, but Fraser was as sure on his feet as ever. Under Ray's hand, though, he was shaking like a street under the El when a train went through.

"Thanks," Ray said.

Fraser wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the bed. The _unmade_ bed.

Ray hadn't noticed it because he didn't make his bed half the time. But, come to think of it, he hadn't slept in this bed last night; Rae had. And she was the kind of person to _fold the kitchen towels. _So why'd she left the bed unmade? She'd been anxious to get out to the park and get back home to Ben, he concluded. Totally understandable.

But it wasn't just that...there was something else about the bed that seemed off, and it took a couple of moments and a closer look before Ray twigged to it. There were two indentations in the bed, not one. He looked back up at Fraser, whose chin dropped right down to his chest.

Bingo. "This what you wanted to tell me? You and her, huh?" Like it could hurt more, knowing that? He was already an inch from what he wanted and couldn't have, and he guessed this was what people called rubbing salt in the wound, but he couldn't feel the difference: pain was pain was pain. His face burned. He was stupid. He'd been so stupid, back there in the other universe, to think that he might have some kind of shot with his Fraser here. Yeah, maybe Rae had gotten Fraser to cave in to the idea of a relationship, but it had been a relationship with _her._ It was fucking ironic.

It wasn't even any consolation that Ben Fraser had been wrong, too.

Rachael Kowalski was so close to what he was and so different at the same time. She'd landed what every eligible female in Chicago wanted and couldn't get, and here Ray was, the male version of her, standing on the other side of a goddamn _chasm,_ looking across.

Fraser nodded. "I slept in your bed with...ah. Er. More than slept." His face went scarlet. "I'm afraid I...I took liberties."

"Liberties? What the fuck is _liberties?_" It came out harder than Ray intended, angrier.

"Actions which were improper, considering you could not give consent," Fraser said in a harsh whisper, like he could barely force the words out, like he was expecting Ray to haul off and flatten him.

"Jesus. You're not saying she was asleep at the time?"

Fraser's head shot up. "Good Lord, no!"

That hadn't stopped Ben, Ray remembered, but he figured right now would not be a good time to tell Fraser about that.

"She wanted...she asked—for days. I tried to stay completely away from her, but she was insistent, and she...she needed her partner on the job. For her own protection, and yours. I couldn't stay away and let her risk both your lives; she was right about that. And she was...rather...insistent about the other..."

"The sex? Missing her husband?"

Fraser dropped his gaze again and thumbed his eyebrow. "Yes. But I can't blame her for my actions. I could have said no."

"So you and Rae got it on last night." It shouldn't really have been a surprise, given what Ray knew about Rae and her Ben. It had been a long month for all of them, Fraser and Ben were just about identical, and she was married to Ben and used to having him around all the time. And a guy—or a girl—was only human, right?

Of course, from Fraser's end of it, maybe it was a little surprising. Ray and Fraser were buddies, not a married couple, and just because Ray had a thing for Fraser didn't mean it was mutual. Starting with the first time they had dinner together, Ray'd given Fraser every opening in the playbook and then some, and Fraser hadn't twigged, or if he had, he'd pretended not to, which was probably worse. And maybe that meant Ray was a little pathetic, if he thought about it, so he didn't let himself think about it. Much.

But if he'd been a woman...well, they were more than buddies, they were partners, they were really close, and if Ray were really a woman, he and Fraser would probably have talked about the possibility, if not done a hell of a lot more.

And, yeah, okay, Rachael had looked a hell of a lot like Raymond last night, right? So theoretically that ought to be encouraging, because a lot of guys—hell, maybe most guys—wouldn't be interested if the soulmate came in the wrong package.

Package, right. Yeah, there was that.

Most guys probably wouldn't be able to see past that, _The Crying Game _notwithstanding. And hell, Ray loved that movie, not that he'd ever admitted it to another living soul, but it wasn't realistic.

Then again, Fraser wasn't most guys.

Fraser didn't think like other people. Fraser probably saw the woman in Rachael and that was what attracted him. That was what he'd have responded to. Rae would've been perfect for Fraser: in a male body, but still herself inside, just like Ray'd still been himself in a female body. Rae was probably a lot like that bounty hunter chick, Janet Whatshername, that Fraser had kissed—kind of macho on the outside, but on the inside...a woman. An actual woman.

Like Ray wasn't.

"Last night, yes," Fraser murmured. "And...other nights." Fraser lifted his chin and his eyes were huge. "I didn't know how to tell you, let alone apologize."

Ray shook his head. "You don't gotta apologize. You slept with _her._"

Fraser put his hand out like he was going to touch Ray, then he pulled it back. "It was your body." Ray saw him swallow real hard, and he grimaced, his eyes looking odd, and all of a sudden Ray realized this was Fraser near tears. He'd never seen Fraser this close to crying before. It shook him.

"Every time I think I've learned my lesson," Fraser continued, "and that I'll never betray the trust of my friend and partner again, I seem to fall short. And the cause was a woman.... Again." his voice broke.

"Whoa, hold on." Ray grabbed Fraser's shoulder hard, like he could anchor him somehow, maybe prevent him from spilling over. And Ray really shouldn't freak at the thought of Fraser shedding a few tears; hell, Ray'd cried like a baby in Fraser's arms in Beth Botrelle's driveway not that long ago, but that was Ray. Ray got emotional, he got scared and panicked sometimes and he lost his temper on a regular basis, and the Botrelle thing—_Superman_ would have wept over that one. But Fraser, he was a _rock._ He felt stuff, he was deep like the Arctic Sea, but he usually didn't let it show. It chilled Ray's gut to think of Fraser losing his shit over something like this.

"You just hold on, Fraser. You are _not_ making some kind of connection here between Rachael Kowalski and any other chick you have known are you?" He wasn't going to name any names, because certain people from Fraser's past didn't deserve invoking, like the way Ray's mom never spoke of the devil. "Because I may never actually have met Rachael, but I have met a lot of the people in her life, I have _been_ her in ways that are not even in the same universe with how I am 'being Vecchio,' and I can tell you she is nothing like what you are thinking."

"Oh, I didn't mean that," Fraser breathed, sounding shocked. "I'd _never_. It's me, I'm the problem. I'd like to be able to pin the blame on women, on someone else, but I can't. It's me, and I've never had any sense of...restraint. She offered something I wanted, and she persisted, and she _needed_...needed me." He put his hand over the left side of his face and then pushed it up and gripped the forelock of his hair. "Dear God. I don't know how one apologizes for a transgression of this magnitude."

"Fraser." Ray aimed his most exasperated tone at him, and it came out just as sharp as he intended it for once, all throaty and masculine, and he was glad to have his own voice back. "There's nobody on this planet more restrained than you, except maybe the Pope."

Fraser watched him, wide-eyed. Finally he sighed and left off pulling his hair, and Ray loosened his grip a little on Fraser's shoulder, but didn't let go, just kind of cupped it, saying with his touch, _I'm here, buddy._

"Perhaps I haven't conveyed how intimately we...ah, what we..." Fraser thumbed his eyebrow. "Good gracious. I don't what my duty is here. On the one hand, a lady's honor must be protected; on the other hand, that lady was..."

"Me?" Ray found a smile from somewhere. It probably shouldn't have been funny, but it kind of was. Hell, he could joke about it now. Since he had been a woman for a month, he figured he kind of had the right.

"Well. Yes," Fraser said, finally. "And that's the problem."

Ray sighed, too. "So how was I?" He tried to make it a joke.

Fraser didn't laugh. Fraser instantly went almost as red as his dress uniform. "Ray, how can you joke about such a thing? Perhaps you don't understand what I meant by saying Rae and I were intimate."

Ray knocked his fist softly against Fraser's shoulder. "Wasn't born yesterday, Frase."

"Well, then I can only promise that I won't...that you're not in any danger of my making further improper advances..."

Which was the problem, of course. "Is it the queer thing?" Ray asked suddenly. "Is that what's bothering you? I mean, she _is_ a woman, but she didn't exactly look like it, did she?"

"She looked like _you,_ Ray." Fraser's eyes were shadowed. "Do you understand now? It was your body," he repeated, his voice a bare whisper. "Your hands, your mouth, your..."

"Cock?"

"Yes." Fraser didn't meet his eyes. Was he worried that _Ray_ was gonna freak about the queer thing? Given what Ray'd just been through in the last month, that was ridiculous.

"Aw, jeez, is that what this is all about? You think I'm going have a fit over that, a guy touching me? Fraser. This is _me._ The guy who _told_ you he'd try anything in bed. Anything legal and in the bounds of decency, anyway."

"The bounds of decency are very individual, Ray."

"Yeah, well, for me the limits are pretty much consenting adults, no one gets hurt, that kind of thing. Guy on guy, that's not a problem. Besides, even if I'd started out as straight as a yardstick, I wouldn't be freaking out about a little guy-on-guy action after what I've just been through. You have no idea."

"I'm sure I don't."

"You didn't hurt me, Fraser." He pulled a long, deep breath, stretched out his arms and his back a little. "In fact, I gotta admit I feel pretty good. Besides, I wouldn't have a leg to stand on even if I did mind. Not after what I did with her husband last night."

Fraser's eyes went wide. "What did you—oh, dear. You, er...did?"

Ray felt his face heat, but he didn't even think about not answering. Fraser deserved to know. "Well, yeah. Look, uh, it happened a couple of times, but it wasn't planned, or anything. I—I didn't mean to."

"Ah," Fraser said, sounding like he didn't understand at all.

"I mean, you know. Normally I would draw the line at doing it with a married person, but...well, I was his wife. If you know what I mean."

Fraser blinked at him, looking like he didn't have the first clue, but at least he hadn't freaked, so Ray kept going. "If you had the opportunity to find out what it's like for a woman, wouldn't you take it?"

He really shouldn't be feeling so defensive about it. After all, since Rae had done it, too, she and Ben would both probably decide it wasn't an issue and move on.

"Oh," Fraser said. "Yes, I see. If you put it that way."

"Nah, I wish I could claim I was that cool and calculating. At the time I was just half-crazy with PMS."

"I can't imagine."

"You don't want to, trust me. Ben was okay with it because I was _her._ Actually, I'm not sure he totally believed the different universes thing was really real. He, uh, he sees things, you know. That other people don't."

"Oh, dear."

"He's not nuts," Ray said, a bit defensively. "I mean, not any more than you are."

"Thank you?" Fraser said.

"Which is not really any more than I am, either, so don't go getting your pumpkin pants in a twist. What I mean is, Ben kind of saw me as her whatsits, that psychological thing. Animus. He did get that _I_ was different, you know, but he didn't get to see two universes. All he saw was a difference in me. Um, R-A-E, Rae, I mean. So to him, it really could've just been some kind of psychological shift, and, you know. He's going to have to deal with it however he can. 'Cause you really can't _know_ unless you've been there."

"No, I imagine not. But I do believe you, Ray. She was...different. Not _you._"

"Yeah. It's pretty obvious you fell in love with her. It makes sense. He did, too, and he married her." He dropped his own head down, unable to meet Fraser's eyes. "She's a pretty lucky woman to get two Benton Frasers to go for her." He shrugged weakly. "You're who you are in any universe, I guess. Not like me. Rae and me aren't the same. Obviously."

He stopped, blew out a breath. "Hell, I don't even know who I am in my own life. Always been somebody different than everybody expected me to be."

"Not I," Fraser said. "I didn't have expectations."

Ray snorted. "Sure you did. You expected when you called out 'Ray!' that first day, that you were gonna get Vecchio."

"Well, yes, but it was immediately clear you weren't he, and although I admit at the time I was rather distressed, and of course I still miss him terribly, I count myself inordinately lucky that it _was_ you standing there that day, and that we're partners and friends and...and even so I don't think you should be required to forgive a transgression of this..."

Ray finally twigged to what Fraser was going on about. Jeez. "Look, you didn't rape me, Fraser."

"I touched your body without your leave."

Ray smacked his own head, shook it. "Fraser. You had permission from this mouth, didn't you? She not only gave you permission, she did her damnedest to talk you into it, do I got that right?"

"Well. Yes."

"Fair enough. That was consent. Over and out."

Fraser dropped his chin back to his chest for a moment. When he lifted his head, his eyes were suspiciously shiny. "Thank you, Ray. That's a great relief."

"Fraser. Jeez. You're just determined to feel guilty over something. That don't mean you _are_ guilty. Unless...I assume you showed her a good time?"

"Ray!" Fraser looked scandalized.

Ray waved a hand. "Yeah, I know. You don't kiss and tell. Wouldn't be gentlemanlike and Canadian."

"In this case, I think you have a right to know. If you really wish to." But Fraser looked like he'd rather eat his big hat.

"Nah. I know you wouldn't endanger my health, at least, not in any way that doesn't involve getting shot at or being drowned in a Great Lake, so it's your business and hers. Just, you know, I can't help thinking..." He stopped himself.

"What, Ray?" Fraser sounded like he really wanted to know.

Ray sighed. If he was going to have these thoughts, they were eventually going to slip out. Might as well have that happen in a, whatsits, a controlled environment, now, while Fraser was feeling grateful to Ray for not freaking about the consent thing. "Look, I know I'm not her. But since the only _her_ you've been with looked like me at the time...it kinda says you're okay with, uh, with driving stick."

"Excuse me?"

"You know. Having sex with a guy."

"Well, yes," Fraser said. "I didn't quite know how to tell you."

"Yeah, so, it's just a crazy thought, but I can't help it, I'm thinking if you'd do it with her when she looked like me, maybe you wouldn't mind doing it with me when I look like myself."

Fraser's eyes went wide. Shocked, yeah, just like Ray'd expected.

Ray ducked his head, felt his face get warm. "Yeah, I know, I sound Looney Tunes. Not to mention really inappropriate and untoward, and stuff. I'm not Rae."

"No, you're not," Fraser said, his voice a little rough.

"Yeah, I know," Ray repeated, pulling in some more air quickly, thinking he might hyper-whatsis—hyperventilate. "Probably stupid to think I could be some kind of substitute for her, right? Even though she's the girl me? Because she's _not_ me, I'm not her. We're different, she's a woman, she's better, she's _milder."_

"Ray!" Frase looked bowled over. "Is that what you think?"

"What? You said she was milder, I was belligerent, she was better, you _said_ that, Fraser. You said you fell for her."

"I never, ever, said she was better, Ray." Fraser took hold of Ray by both biceps, his hands tight around them, digging in a little. Hurting a little, even.

Ray didn't want him to ever let go.

"I _like_ your belligerence," Fraser added.

"No, you don't, it drives you crazy. It's not all polite and Canadian."

Fraser shook his head vehemently. "I don't want you to be. If you were, you wouldn't be _you." _Fraser tightened his hands on Ray's arms, practically shaking him. "Ray. You're not some kind of substitute for her. Don't you see? She was a substitute for _you."_

"What?" Ray's breath really was gone now, he couldn't breathe. He was as kayoed as he would've been if he'd gone a round in the ring with the Sugarman.

Fraser was up in his face, so close. "Yes. Because I couldn't have _you._ She was the compromise. Not you, Ray. It's you I've wanted all along. That's what I was trying to confess. I tried to resist, but..."

He pulled back, took a quick, rough breath, and this time Ray was sure he saw the gleam of a tear wetting Fraser's eyelashes. "Ultimately I was too weak. Do you understand now, Ray? I took the opportunistic choice...because I _could._ Because it was almost what I wanted, and I was never going to get _that_." His voice broke on the words, and that was horrible, that was a sound Ray never wanted to hear again.

He wanted to kiss it right off Fraser's lips.

If Fraser had looked even a little bit happy, a little bit hopeful, Ray would have. But Fraser looked like he'd just been told Canada had been annexed by Michigan, or something.

Ray got hold of him by the shoulders. "You _got_ me, Fraser," he said. "I want you, too."

"I don't see how you could," Fraser said. "I know you're the forgiving sort, I know you're kind. You're a good man, Ray. You don't deserve someone who'd—who'd commit such a self-serving act."

"Hell, _yes_, I do," Ray said, putting every ounce of conviction he could muster into it.

"It's destructive," Fraser said, "this tendency of mine. I've tried to root it out, but it runs too deep. I give lip service to honor and principle, but when it really matters, I'll throw it all away for—"

"For_ love,"_ Ray practically shouted in his face. "That's what you're trying to say. You'd toss it all away for love."

 "And that doesn't bother you?"

"_Bother_ me? Are you kidding?" Ray did shout, this time. "C'mon, Fraser! This is me you're talking to."

Ray's heart was pounding. He was pressing his case, it was like the moment in an interrogation when the perp was just about to spill everything. Ray was going for the signed confession, here. Because through all of Fraser's blither, he'd heard the important thing: Fraser loved him. Fraser loved _him._

That was worth everything and then some.

Fraser blinked. Opened his mouth, closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again. Looked at Ray like he was seeing him with new eyes, which maybe he was.

"I wrote the book on throwing stuff away for love," Ray said, a lot more quietly. "I became a cop for Stella. I quit boxing for Stella. I let my dad take the GTO to Arizona because Stella didn't like it any more. And two years ago I became a pathetic divorced guy because that was what made Stella happy."

"Oh, Ray."

"And you know what? That stuff was small potatoes compared to what I've done for you, Fraser. I have taken forty-two stitches for you jumping through plate glass, and I have almost drowned four times. I've taken slugs in the vest twice and I can't even count how many shots have been fired at me because of you. Because I love you. I love you, Fraser. So I couldn't resist Ben any more than you could resist Rae, but I'll tell you something."

"Ray..." Fraser's arms came up around him, his hands warm on Ray's shoulder blades.

"It was you I wanted. Needed. Not Rae's husband Ben, but _you,_ Fraser, my partner and friend. I came back thinking, you know, maybe I could talk you into taking a chance on me and maybe I couldn't, but either way, we're a duet, and I needed to be with you."

"And it wouldn't be right to keep Rae from her own life," Fraser said.

"That's right. 'Cause I am a guy with principles, and there is no conflict, Fraser. There is no conflict between loving you and my principles. Yeah, I would prefer not to get shot at so much, and I am going to try like hell to talk you into carrying a weapon, but I am not going to let that stop me from being your partner, because we are a _duet_ and I want us to be the permanent kind."

He stopped to catch a breath, then added, "So what do your principles say about me, Fraser? Tell me now, because I'm dying to kiss you."

"They say...they say...no conflict," Fraser said, and there was a look on his face that Ray'd never seen there before. It was like...maybe awe, he didn't know. "And that was a brilliantly logical argument."

Ray grinned. "Thanks." He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. "Uh, so can I...?"

Fraser didn't answer that, he just leaned in and went for Ray's mouth, and then they were kissing.

 


	15. Being Ray Kowalski

Fraser's mouth on his was the best thing Ray had ever felt in this universe or any other.

And it wasn't really like kissing Ben, either, which made absolutely no sense; it should have felt exactly the same, right? It didn't, and the difference was in Ray. To Fraser it must have felt the same as when he'd kissed Rae, though, and that thought brought Ray up short. He came up for air, and when he got some he said the first thing that came into his head, which was predictably stupid: "Whoa. That's queer."

"Well, yes, Ray, but I thought homosexuality didn't bother you."

"Not that kind of queer, Fraser; that kind is good. I mean this is odd, strange, bizarre."

"What is?"

"Knowing you've done this before and I haven't."

"Oh no, Ray. I haven't done this before." He placed a kiss on Ray's jawline, then another, then planted a whole line of them, sweet and soft, all the way up to Ray's ear, and kissed that, too. "This is _you."_

A delicious shiver followed Fraser's lips all the way up, making Ray's knees feel loose.

"But it's the same bodies. Doesn't it feel the same as with Rae?"

"Not in the least," Fraser said. "Ray, can I—?" He had his hands on the front of Ray's t-shirt, his fingers sliding to the waist, pulling up.

"Yeah." Ray shimmied, left, right, down, and the shirt was off him, and Fraser's hands were on Ray's chest, curving over his hard, male pecs, his bony ribcage, his abs, his flat stomach. There was nothing feminine about Ray's torso, and Fraser seemed to like it just fine.

Fraser kissed Ray's chest, even his flat nipples, which hardened up like Rae's, but didn't feel as intensely good. Fraser didn't linger there, but kissed his way down Ray's belly to the waistband of his jeans. "Ray. Let me?"

Oh, God. Fraser wanted to...

Jesus fucking Christ, he wanted to...

"Yeah, yeah, okay." Ray flicked the top button open, and that was apparently more help than Fraser wanted, because he batted Ray's hand away gently and popped the rest of the buttons open himself in about a second. Then he got hold of the band of Ray's boxer briefs, easing the fabric away from Ray's erection—and then hauled the jeans and briefs both down so fast that Ray almost toppled over. Jeez, Fraser moved fast once he decided to do it.

Fraser dropped to his knees.

Holy Christ on a banana split.

Ray couldn't move, because his pants were somewhere in the vicinity of his ankles, hobbling him, and also because Fraser was staring at Ray's dick like he'd been waiting all his life to see it hard for him.

Maybe he had been waiting a while for that.

Because Fraser was right. They _hadn't_ done any of this before. This was new for both of them.

Fraser looked from his dick up to his face, back to his dick again, almost like he couldn't believe his good luck.

Ray couldn't stop himself even though he was going to lose his balance; he grabbed himself right there in front of Fraser and gave his dick a long, tight, delicious stroke. Oh, God, yes. He'd missed that.

His dick was hard and hot in his hand, blood pulsing under the soft skin as it filled even more. He stroked himself again, and his hand brushed against his balls on the downstroke, so good, so _good,_ and they were already tight and full and high under his cock, and Ray really couldn't stop himself, he cupped them in his hand and stroked them, too.

He couldn't stop the sound he made, either, and he would have been embarrassed, except Fraser was looking at Ray like he hung the damn moon and all the stars.

That look on Fraser's face probably would have been enough to take Ray from zero to raging hard-on in ten seconds, even if he hadn't already been halfway there. "Fraser—" he choked out, but that was all, because Fraser's mouth was suddenly on him, taking his cock into perfect wet warmth, holding him there, then moving on him, licking him, starting to suck.

Ray tried to stay upright, but his legs shook, and it was a good thing he was right next to the bed anyway. Fraser let him go just long enough to ease him down on the bed, and then he crawled up there next to him on hands and knees and went straight for his cock again.

For long, incoherent moments, Ray couldn't do anything but lie there and take it. Fraser's mouth on him was incredibly sweet, absolutely perfect. Fraser's tongue was _athletic, _like nothing Ray'd ever felt before, because Ben didn't do that to Rae's body; it probably would have felt too rough, too hard. But on Ray's male body, it felt great. Fraser was fast, he was all over Ray's cock, licking the entire shaft and over the head, then dodging away before Ray's hips could get into some kind of regular motion. Ray was restricted, too, not only was Fraser holding him down, but his ankles were still caught in his pants, and—jeez, his boots were still on.

Fraser had stripped him down to the ankles and then apparently he forgot about Ray's clothes and just...went for him. Because he wanted him so much. Because he wanted _Ray._

Ray let out a long groan. It sounded like frustration, and it sounded like satisfaction; he was weirdly caught between the two, and not really able to form actual words. He kicked his legs just enough to get the point across, and Fraser lifted his head and shook himself and seemed to come to his senses for a moment. "Oh, dear...your...let me..."

"Yeah, yeah," Ray breathed. "Off. Clothes. Get them..." He tried to kick his feet, but only made awkward jerky motions.

Fraser sat up on his heels and looked, and seemed surprised to see Ray's boots. He scrambled off the bed and pulled them off, and then got Ray's pants and underwear untangled from around his ankles, and whipped his socks off, too, and then Ray was naked.

Fraser was still fully dressed except for his shoes, but he didn't seem to notice. He didn't seem to be paying any attention, even though his jeans had to be getting pretty tight. Ray could see the hard bulge under the fly, and he reached a hand to it, got his fingers around it, and oh, God, yeah, that was hot and hard Fraser under there, getting harder under Ray's fingers, responding to him. To _him_.

"God, Fraser, you're..." Ray managed to say before he had to stop for more air.

"Yeah," Fraser said distractedly, and kissed his way down Ray's belly again, heading for Ray's cock. Guy had a one-track mind, which Ray wasn't complaining about that at _all. _He dug his heels into the mattress and arched his back, thrusting his hips up just as Fraser got his mouth around Ray's cock again, and this time Ray slid all the way in—at least, as far as Fraser's mouth could take him, which was far enough to make Ray nearly jump out of his skin with pleasure.

Ray found his voice. "Fraser, please. Fraser. Oh God."

Fraser sank down on him another inch, and Ray didn't know how he could even _do _that. Because Ray was kind of big, and Fraser, yeah, Fraser liked to play superhero on the job, and the guy had a big square jaw, but Ray had to be halfway down his throat at this point.

Fraser swallowed. Ray practically shot up off the bed. Would have, if Fraser hadn't been holding him down by the hips. And Fraser swallowed again, his throat clenched around Ray, tight and hot and perfect. After a long, excruciatingly delightful moment of that, he eased back, licking up the underside of Ray's cock, his agile tongue wet and strong on the underside, playing over the most sensitive places. He held it gently in the strong circle of his lips and released the shaft by bit, letting just the edges of his teeth touch Ray, so gently, till he got to the head, and once there, he licked all around it and pushed his mouth back down, up and down, again and again, so fast Ray almost couldn't follow the motion.

Hell, he couldn't even remember his name, and for once, he didn't care in the least. He breathed and his hips moved without his direction, without him even being half aware of it. He just _moved_ under Fraser and Fraser moved with him, and hell, _this _was dancing, this was grooving, this was ecstasy.

Fraser pulled back to just the head, his lips tight around it, and that was _it,_ all Ray could take. He went over the edge yelling something he didn't recognize, not even sure who was yelling. He shot hard into Fraser's mouth, and Fraser lapped him up and sank back down on him, and he spilled more down Fraser's hot throat until he had no more to spill.

Ray flopped back on the bed, every muscle in his body gone limp, a delicious, lazy feeling soaking through him.

It took him a couple of minutes to get clear enough to recognize the feeling: relaxation. He was relaxed, boneless. Ray typically was a hyper kind of guy, kind of wired, on his toes all the time, and he didn't relax that often. Usually it took a good slug of single malt to do the trick, and, okay, that stuff tasted heavenly, but he didn't indulge too often, because he didn't _trust_ being relaxed all that much.

A cop living alone, he really couldn't.

But he wasn't alone any more. He was with Fraser.

He reached a hand to him. "Frase."

Fraser wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand and climbed up to kiss Ray, and yeah, salt and bitter and musk...that was Ray, that was them together Ray was tasting. Better than single malt.

Fraser was half-smiling, but also looking a question at him.

Ray groaned. "Yes, you almost killed me," he said. "But I would've died happy."

Fraser's beautiful face relaxed into a full smile. "I wanted it to be good."

"Which it was not even in the same city," Ray said, still gulping air. "Or planet. It left good behind and went on to a whole other dimension of greatness. And when I can breathe and maybe even think again—although that's asking a lot, here—I'll be happy to return the favor."

Fraser beamed. "Ray."

"You just like saying my name."

"Stanley Raymond Kowalski, I just like _you._ In point of fact, I love you."

It was Ray's turn to grin like he was going to split his face. "Benton Fraser, I love you back."

He put his hand up again, and Fraser laced their fingers together, and Ray pulled their joined hands to his mouth and kissed Fraser's. Which some guys would think that was a chick thing, but Ray didn't have anything to prove here, so he didn't care.

He knew Fraser didn't, either.

Fraser was still grinning at him like he was the best thing he'd ever seen in a thousand and one lifetimes. But there was something out of place, and for a moment, Ray didn't know what it was. He looked Fraser over from his messy dark head down to his sock feet, and then he realized: Fraser was _still_ fully dressed.

Ray laughed. "You, uh, you always have sex with your clothes on, Fraser?"

Fraser looked down at himself, startled. The front of his jeans still looked pretty distended, and Ray could swear he saw a wet spot in the worn denim. Fraser must be hard enough to hammer nails.

"Oh, dear," Fraser said. "Er, no, to answer your question. Usually I undress. I'm afraid I was quite..."

"It's okay, I understand. You were trying to do me before I got away. And you did. Although I am not going anywhere. But I am _done_ like turkey." He grinned.

"Oh. Would you rather sleep now?"

"Are you kidding? Cut the crazy talk and get out of those jeans before your dick makes a hole in them. I want to touch you."

"Oh. _Oh._ Yes." As though Fraser still hadn't totally twigged to the idea that Ray _wanted_ him. Poor guy. He must have spent a very long time convincing himself that Ray didn't, Ray couldn't, and it had gotten to be a habit.

The two of them were a piece of work.

Ray wondered how long it would have taken them if Rae hadn't stepped in and shaken things up.

It hit him that the past month had been a very good thing, after all. Like maybe the best thing that had ever happened to him.

Fraser sat back on his heels and pulled his shirt off. Since he was wearing the buttoned kind, that was a little tough on the shirt; Ray heard a couple of buttons hit the floorboards. Fraser, who could identify a bullet from hearing somebody load it into a gun two floors down, didn't seem to notice. He whipped off his undershirt and undid his jeans, and stood up just long enough to get everything off.

Then he crawled back up next to Ray and kissed his shoulder, making Ray shiver. Yeah, he was definitely up for a lot more. Damn good thing he had a personal day. It was going to get very personal, if Ray had any say in it.

Ray pulled back enough to check Fraser out. Just as beautiful as Ben, and with mostly the same scars, too. He ran his hand over Fraser's smooth chest and down over his ribs, and Fraser squirmed, ticklish. Ray filed that information and moved his hand to Fraser's belly. Mmm, smooth and hard, with just a little softness over the six-pack of his abs.

He slid his hand down farther and got it around Fraser's cock, which pushed up into his fist like it already knew him. And it really didn't, he thought, but he was going to enjoy getting acquainted, for sure. He gave it a couple of long, tight, experimental strokes, remembering how he'd done it to Ben, but mostly just watching Fraser for clues to how fast and tight he liked it.

Fraser gasped and thrust up quickly into his hand, little rabbity thrusts, like he couldn't help himself.

Ray pulled him close and eased his stroking up a bit, trying not to tease, but trying to pull back the intensity a little. "You do sex at, like, sixty miles an hour all the time?" Ray asked.

Fraser grinned. "Well, no, I don't have to."

"Okay, good. 'Cause I got my energy back now, and I'm raring to go, here, but...you know, I usually like to go a little slower. Savor, you know."

"Oh, yes," Fraser breathed.

"And I haven't, uh...sucked anyone's cock since nineteen...um, I don't even remember. Seventy something, or maybe eighty. Before Stella and me were a steady thing. Might be a little rusty."

"You didn't...with him?"

Ray shook his head. "Never got the chance, really. I told you, the couple of times we did it, it wasn't really planned."

"Ah."

"She did it to you, though, huh?"

"Well. Ah. Yes."

"Well, I want to taste you, but there's time for that. Is there anything you didn't do with her that you'd like to try?"

Fraser went instantly red.

"Whoa. That reaction because you did everything and then some, or is there something specific you're thinking of?"

"Ray, I...I would love it if you would, er..."

"C'mon, Fraser. If you can do it you can say it."

"Ah, if you would penetrate me."

Ray made a face. "You mean fuck you."

"I believe that's what I said."

Ray laughed. "No, I did not hear the F word out of your mouth—yet. Maybe I'll get you there one of these days, but, you know. One thing at a time." Then he licked his lips. "So, uh, I would love to, but after what you just did to me, you might have to wait another half hour for that. Think you can hold out?"

"Oh," Fraser said, thrusting unconsciously into Ray's hand. "Oh. Certainly."

Which, not. No way was Fraser going to hang on that long, not the way he was moving. His cock was getting all slippery in Ray's hand, really leaking, and the head was pushed all the way out of the foreskin now.

"So you didn't do that with her?" Ray said.

Fraser blushed scarlet _again_.

"Out with it," Ray said.

"Well, er, I didn't say that."

"Okay, so you did. Look, I'm okay with it either way but, hey, you're the one who's ready to go, here, so how about you fuck me?"

"Ray!"

Ray smiled. "It's good, isn't it? What did you think?"

"It's wonderful. But..." Fraser swallowed hard. "Ray, don't you think...I mean, you were so recently straight..."

"Who, me? Did I say I was straight?"

"Er, no."

"Didn't I, in fact, just tell you I sucked cock back in...well. High school, the first time. That ain't straight, Fraser."

"Oh. But Stella..."

"I'm bi. A lot of people are; it's not a crime." Ray shrugged. "Stella knew. It never bothered her, she knew I was faithful, end of story."

"But you were so recently a woman, Ray. Don't you want to...well...wouldn't you rather take the role of the—"

"Man? You are _not_ going to say 'man,' as in, 'which one's the man,' are you? Christ, you haven't been queer for long, have you?"

Fraser scrubbed at his eyebrow with his thumb. "Ah, I don't know. I thought I was straight before I fell in love with you."

That warmed Ray all over. "Wow."

"I've had very little experience with romantic love," Fraser said, kind of defensively, "The first was a woman, before I met you. The second was you."

"And Rae?"

"I love her as an aspect of you," Fraser said. "I can't think of a better way to put it. She's not in this...dimension, for lack of a better word, so it's not an issue."

"Okay," Ray said. "I am good with that. So about who should fuck who—"

"Whom," Fraser said distractedly.

Ray just laughed. Because _of course_ Fraser would correct a guy's grammar in bed. "Okay, _whom,_ whatever. I don't _care_ whom fucks who." He knew he had it wrong, but he stroked Fraser's cock at the same moment, one long, twisting stroke, and Fraser probably never even heard the grammar thing.

Then Ray let him go, because Fraser's breathing was getting uneven, and Ray didn't want to drive Fraser over the edge too soon. "You're the one with the wood at the moment, so you're up to bat, buddy."

"I'm concerned it could hurt you."

"Okay, first time, it could smart a bit. I'm not worried. What did Rachael think?"

"Ah, we didn't...I couldn't do that to you, Ray. Not without your consent. _Your _consent. Because you're a virgin. At least, I assumed you were."

"No time like the present to unload that label," Ray said, grimacing.

"So you haven't...?"

Ray shook his head. "Didn't get _that_ far in high school. Not even with Stella."

"Did you and, ah, Ben...?"

"Yes, he fucked me. But no, he didn't fuck me up the ass. Because I was a chick; I had a pussy and what's the point in having one if you don't get to experience it?"

"That's very understandable, Ray."

"Which I'm sure is why you let her fuck you. Which I think was the right call, for the same reason. She had a dick, absolutely she should try it out."

Fraser sighed. "I'm glad you understand."

"Hell, yeah. I understand better than anybody. Rachael and me, we're like this." He held up his crossed fingers. "But if you're thinking I need to...what do they call it? Assert my masculinity? Nah, there's no need for that. I mean, don't get me wrong: I love my dick. I'm real happy to be reunited. But it don't make me _me, _Fraser."

He put his hand over his heart, tapped his chest. "_This _is me, in here. Inside." He pulled Fraser close. "So come in here and find me."

"Ray." Fraser's eyes were wide, startlingly blue.

Ray leaned in and kissed him, quick and hot. "I'm good with it. I want to feel you inside me. I want you to fuck me."

Fraser just...melted into his arms. "God, yes!" He kissed under Ray's jaw, making him squirm, because it tickled, and it didn't, and his dick started waking up.

Fraser didn't waste time after that, though he had to take everything a lot slower than before, because of having to slick up both of them, and then get Ray ready to take him in. Fraser slicked up a couple of fingers first, and pushed them in real carefully, first one, then the other alongside it, and he leaned in and sucked Ray's cock at the same time, and, yeah, that first time was no fluke. Fraser was _good_ at that, and he'd obviously put his practice time with Rae to good use. His fingers added a whole new dimension, making Ray writhe on the bed, and yeah, he was seriously back in the game.

His cock was hard again, and Fraser saw that and gave him a look that asked if he really wanted to be the one _whom_ got fucked. Ray just mock-glared at him, because, _hell yes_, he did, and it wasn't only because he wasn't sure he could stay hard long enough after that first incredible blow job.

It was also because _this_ was the thing Fraser hadn't done with Rae. And because "virgin" _was_ a nasty word—to a 37-year-old guy, anyway, even if it was, what did you call it, severely qualified in his case.

Fraser knew where the lube was in the nightstand, which Ray would've blushed over that, except he realized Rae'd probably been the one to find it. And _that_ thought just made him hotter, thinking of her doing herself in his body.

Fraser slipped his fingers out of Ray carefully, and then he fished a condom out of the drawer and picked up the lube, and got both of them on himself in what had to be record time.

And then he gathered Ray into his arms and kissed him, deep and hot. "Do you want to turn over?"

"I don't care. Just put it in me," Ray groaned. He heaved up like he was trying to hump something himself, and in the position Fraser had him in, that was an exercise in frustration. "Now, Fraser." He spread his legs as wide as they'd go, and tilted his hips up, and, okay, it was still a little bit more awkward than it had been as a woman, because Ray's skinny hips just didn't want to get around Fraser's bigger ones.

But Fraser didn't miss a beat; he pushed a pillow under Ray's lower back and curled him up into his arms, hooking Ray's legs over his elbows. And then there he was, pressing his hard, hot cock against Ray's ass, and this was _it,_ time to put up or shut up, and Ray took a big breath and held it, and when he let it out, Fraser pushed _in._ He went slow, but Ray could feel him shaking with the strain of holding back, and, okay, _yeah,_ that was a pretty good stretch, there, kind of burning a little. Fraser's dick wasn't freakishly huge, but it wasn't small, either, and it was thick enough to make going in kind of tough.

Ray panted a little, and Fraser stopped.

"Oh, God, don't stop, keep pushing," Ray managed to say between breaths.

Fraser resumed, but really slow, and he said, "I found it helps to bear down a little. Push against me."

Which didn't make any sense, but Ray was going with it, because Fraser was his partner, and that was the way partners worked. And whaddya know, it did work, and Fraser slid into him most of the way, and then, with one more good push, he was in.

Ray's eyes rolled back in his head. It still hurt some, but he didn't _care,_ because it also felt damn _fine,_ and when Fraser started moving, real gently at first, all of a sudden there was something...yeah, that! a sweet burst of sensation that reminded him of the startling feeling of having his girl nipples sucked or his clit touched, or...

Jeez, he was pretty scrambled. He didn't care about that, either. Fraser had stepped up the pace and was trying some actual thrusts now, each one sparking that same sensation deep in Ray's ass, but there was something else, too. He gradually realized it was something about how that cock moved inside him, deep and pushy and so _there, _connecting him to Fraser like they were wired together in the same circuit, and when had Ray told him his tongue and electricity were not a good mix? Because maybe Fraser had swallowed some of that electricity and was giving it back to Ray now, and it sure as hell was good.

Fraser moaned out something that didn't have words, but Ray didn't need them. He pressed his face up as close to Fraser's chest as he could get and he smelled him, and yeah, just a fraction different from Ben, but still the same woodsy, sweet Fraser smell that he loved.

The electric feeling inside him didn't quit, it spread, and Fraser's cock seemed to swell up bigger and harder inside him, and yeah, soon; he could feel Fraser's climax gathering, surging up, almost ready to go. The feeling inside Ray was something like getting fucked in his pussy and feeling that cock pushing up inside, pressing his womb or deep in his gut, it didn't matter...and he got it, he _got _it, it _was_ the same, it didn't _matter_ what equipment he had, even here, even in this, because it was all_ beautiful, _it was Fraser and him, him and Fraser, and there were probably thousands of each of them in different dimensions. Maybe infinite ones. Maybe every time they woke up in the morning, the universe had to sort them all out, but here and now they were all connected.

Because he was Ray and he was Rae, and in some crazy way, he was Fraser, too; he could see that now.

Fraser leaned over far enough to kiss Ray's shoulder, all he could manage with the hard work he was doing, his sweat dripping down onto Ray on every thrust in. Ray put his experience as a girl to good use: he put his back into it and met each thrust, using the pillow for leverage and being careful to hold Fraser steady against him with his legs. He moved the left one, showing Fraser that he didn't need him to hold it over his elbow any more. Fraser let go, and Ray wrapped his leg around Fraser's waist instead and that was absolute greatness, because it freed Fraser's right hand, and he immediately wrapped it around Ray's cock and started stroking him in time to his thrusts.

Then they were both yelling and going over the edge, their thrusts stilling at the same moment, every muscle they both possessed locked tight, and there was a space where they didn't move, didn't even _breathe,_ complete whiteout, and then the world burst back into color and sound again and they were both coming all over the place, Fraser in Ray's ass and Ray all over his belly and Fraser's hand. Fraser looked totally zoned, and then gradually he seemed to shake himself back to awareness. He raised himself on his strong arms and looked down. Winced a little as he got hold of the condom and pulled very carefully out of Ray.

"Sore?" Ray said.

"Ah, just a little."

Ray nodded. "Me, too. I mean, from Rae doing it to you. I finally realized what that was." He smiled. "Plus my ass kind of is, too, but in a good way. We went at it pretty hard, huh?"

"Conventional wisdom holds that anything worth doing," Fraser said between breaths, "is worth overdoing. Once in a while."

"Amen to that."

Fraser eased himself back and dealt with the condom, then wiped himself off good on the sheet and flopped down next to Ray. He made this sound like one of Dief's big doggy yawns, and Ray laughed and lay back on the bed and realized he felt better than he could ever remember feeling.

They lay quiet, cooling down, sweat and more drying on them. Ray knew he was probably sticky and gross, but he didn't feel like moving an inch, and anyway, Fraser had lived among the musk ox on the tundra, right?

Ray was probably exhausted and too sex-stupid to even know it, but he wasn't dozing off just yet, and if he knew Fraser—and he did—Fraser would be up for a little pillow talk, even now.

He put a lazy hand over to ruffle Fraser's glossy dark hair. "You know, Frase, I didn't think I was ever gonna get to touch you. I didn't think you were interested in me. Or any guy, maybe."

Fraser smiled a little wistfully. "While I didn't think you were."

"Yeah, we should've talked, huh?"

"Yeah," Fraser said softly.

"Why didn't you say something? I put out lots of hints, but...okay, so I was a wuss. I didn't come out and ask. I was afraid to put you on the spot like that, because you would've had to choose, and I'd never seen any hint you even thought of me that way."

"I couldn't bring myself to ask you," Fraser said. "I...I've loved you for a long time. And you're too important to me to risk any part of our friendship, our partnership, simply because I found it difficult to...rein in my libido."

"Fraser, your libido is more reined in than those musical Mountie horses." He grinned. "Uh, well, it _was. _I think we kind of blew that out of the water."

Fraser flicked his tongue out over his lip and put his thumb up to scratch at his eyebrow, and that typical nervous gesture doubled Ray up with laughter. "Freak," he accused, leaning up over him and kissing both his thumb and his eyebrow and tickling him until Fraser gave in and laughed with him.

It was a beautiful sound.

Ray smoothed Fraser's eyebrow back in place. He couldn't stop looking at Fraser's face, thinking how much he looked like Rae's Ben...and how much he actually didn't. He saw the differences now. Ben had been loved, really loved, for a couple of years now. It had taken some of the stiffness out of him; maybe that was it. Ray would have to see if he could do the same for his Fraser. Maybe it wouldn't even take him two years, he thought. Maybe he could make up for some lost time.

Maybe he could get him to stop starching his shorts, for openers.

On the other hand, maybe that was a little ambitious.

He sighed. "You know, I'm not totally sure that that Fraser believed I wasn't his Rae. He kind of...he doubts himself, sometimes. Isn't sure he's seeing what's really there."

"I...know the feeling," Fraser said, and it sounded like it was hard for him to even get the words out.

"Fraser, he sees his dead father," Ray said. "Says he talks to him and everything."

"Er," Fraser said. In that way that totally meant it wasn't the end of True Confessions Night chez Ray.

"Oh, jeez. You too?" He blew out an exasperated breath. "Fraser, how many times I got to tell you, partners means _sharing_."

Fraser sighed. "I'm trying to learn. Sharing doesn't come naturally to me."

"Yeah, I know. You'll share your stuff, and you'll give a stranger your last dime, and you'll tell Inuit folktales till you're out of air, but the important things, you have a hard time saying those."

"I've tried on occasion," Fraser said. "But until you, Ray, no one really listened," Fraser said. "The few times I tried, my friends fell asleep. Until you."

Ray smiled, and stroked his fingertips over Fraser's cheek, his lips. "Their loss. Your stories are usually kind of off the wall, I admit, but you can definitely spin a yarn, and they always have a point."

"Why, thank you, Ray."

"Sometimes it's a screwball point, but they always got one."

"Yes." Fraser captured Ray's roving fingers and planted a kiss on the tip of each one.

Ray laughed, and dived in and kissed him some more, as though he hadn't had enough, and then it hit him—of course he hadn't had enough. He was just getting started here. He kissed up to Fraser's ear and whispered, "I won't tell," against the edge of it.

"Won't tell what?"

"That you're a romantic."

"Oh," Fraser said. "Well. Thank you, Ray."

"Yeah. Wouldn't want to spoil your Mountie image."

"I appreciate that."

Ray yawned. "Me, though, I got no reputation to protect, so you just go ahead and tell anybody you want."

"What, that you're a romantic?"

"If they don't already know that, they haven't been playing the home game," Ray said over another yawn. "I mean, you can tell people about us if you want."

"Ray! Aren't you concerned about...well, American policemen aren't reputed to be the most accepting of alternative lifestyles."

"Yeah, well." Ray waved an idle hand, easing back on the pillow, feeling messy and sweaty and absolutely fine. "I've been a police _woman_ for a month. Gay cops think they got problems, they ought to try that one on for size."

"Ah."

"Ah," Ray mocked gently. But he was smiling, closing his eyes because they just wouldn't stay open.

Just before he sank into sleep he felt Fraser's hand settle on his chest, right over his heart.

                  
He stood poised, waiting for the music to come up, the spotlight to find him. "Three, two, one," he heard from the wings, just a whisper that wouldn't carry past the edge of the curtain, and his music came up, the opening bars of "Sisters," the drums and the bass, and that funky muted electric guitar, vamping for eight measures, getting the audience ready. "Go," Maddy said behind him, but she didn't push him, because he responded automatically, just like he always did after that first time. It was like shooting a gun or driving a car: you didn't forget the first steps of a dance, and once the music came up, you just went with it, and it carried you along.

He struck his opening pose and held it: one, two, three, four, and there was his light, right on time. He moved, right on his beat, right where he was supposed to be, with perfect timing.

He could feel the audience out there in the brilliant dark, he could even hear them, but he couldn't see them, all except one. One face caught the light, maybe a reflection off one of the mirrors, or maybe it generated its own light, a beacon in the dark, like a lighthouse, showing any lost ships the way to a safe haven.

Ray didn't have to see the red uniform to know it was there. Didn't have to see the blue of his eyes to know who it was. Fraser. Not Ben.

Ray was well into the dance; the second verse was giving way to the chorus, but now he danced his heart out, because Fraser was watching, and he wanted to dance for him. Wanted to bring that beautiful smile back to Fraser's face, again and again.

And then he realized, _Fraser_ is watching, and Fraser wasn't in the same universe with Rae, not any more, so who was Ray? And on a turn that spun him away from the audience, Ray got a hand down quickly and just brushed it against the front of his pants, and—

—yeah, that was his dick, stiffening up, because dancing did that to him, and the hips Ray was shaking were pretty skinny, and the front of his shirt was looser than it had been as Rae, so the evidence was pretty clear.

He was himself.

He spun back around, into the final steps, just Annie and Aretha and him, all on the same beat, and then he was done.

The music faded and the audience started to react, but Ray's attention was riveted to that one point in space where Fraser still shone out of the dark. All Ray had to do was stay focused on that light and he knew he'd never again lose sight of the way home.

The applause sounded like a home run at Wrigley Field.

He didn't remember getting off stage, he didn't remember ducking through the wings and bursting through the door of the dressing room, but he must have, and Fraser was standing there, still glowing, brighter than the makeup lights, and he was holding out his arms.

Ray dived straight into that embrace and Fraser spun him around, making a full circle and then more, like they were waltzing in place. And then somehow they were stopped, frozen in place, and that was greatness, too, because Ray needed to kiss Fraser, he needed to kiss him, no matter what universe they were in, and he was going to do it. And he didn't care if the entire Chicago police force, Stella, his parents, Steve McQueen, and the President were all standing there watching.

Fraser's lips were incredibly soft, and his mouth was hot and perfect under Ray's, and Ray dived in there, too, giving Fraser his tongue like he could pour his soul into him, and maybe if he tried long and hard enough, he could.

Long and hard, yeah. He was that, too, hard against Fraser's hip, and he was naked, because it was just that easy, and he was sliding himself gently against Fraser's soft, thick skin, because Fraser was suddenly naked, too, naked in Ray's dream with him, and that was perfect.

Somebody tapped him on the shoulder and he reluctantly let go of Fraser and turned. Maddy. She looked happy, which made Ray happy, too. He hadn't seen a smile like that on Maddy except maybe when she was performing. And it made sense, because he'd only known her for a month, a pretty rough month for her, when she'd lost her home and her job and most of the people she called family.

Maddy didn't seem to notice or care that he was naked. Her big, dark eyes were riveted on his. "Ray," she said, like she was really happy to see him. He heard the Y loud and clear.

Ray hugged her quickly, then pulled back to ask, "So...you okay? Everything okay? You look great."

She was nodding. "I'm gonna be fine, Ray. I think I might stick around. One of my old clients...he's got money. He always liked this place. He's gonna buy the club. With me; I'm going to be a part owner. We're going to renovate, change everything." She waved an expansive hand. "I'm going to run the place."

"Oh, yeah? That's great news. What're you gonna call it?"

"What do you think?" she shot back.

Ray thought for a minute, then grinned. "Sisters," he said.

"Got it in one," she said, and grinned back, and wow, Ray loved that big, wide smile.

"Call Fraser," he said, even though Fraser was standing right there behind him, because he meant the _other _Fraser—Ben. "Call Ben, you still got the number. Have him bring Rae by, and..." he stopped, unsure whether she would understand. "You know what I mean? I mean_ her."_

"Yes," Maddy said. "Fraser already phoned and said everything was fine. He said she was happy to be home."

"Good. That's—thank you for telling me. I didn't have a way to know for sure. Because, I'm back home, too. This is me, the male me. "

She took a little step back and looked him over, and Ray looked down, and, yeah, still naked. And still kind of hard.

He thought about blushing, but didn't feel the heat.

"Wow," Maddy said. "You sure are."

"I'm pretty sure this is a dream," he said.

"Oh, yes," she said. "A lucid one. I've been reading up on those."

"It's a dream for you, too? You're really Maddy?"

"I sure am," she said.

She was wearing one of her sequined costumes, shimmering in the dressing-room lights, and she was still tall and strong and had legs up to _there,_ but somehow Ray just knew, the way you just know stuff in dreams, that she looked a hundred percent like a girl under the dress.

She smiled like she heard him thinking. "Yeah, I am," she said. "In my dreams I always am."

"Not me," Ray said. "I got some, uh, confusion like that in my dreams." He laughed a little. "You know, but when I'm not dreaming, this is me. In the uh, in the flesh."

She laughed her sweet, throaty little laugh, and said, "You're gorgeous, honey. You tell your Fraser he's a lucky man."

"You can tell him yourself; he's right h—" Ray started to say, turning, but Fraser wasn't there.

"It's all right," Maddy said. "I think that just means it's time to wake up."

"Okay," he said, perfectly calm, which would have been kind of weird if it hadn't been a dream. The dressing room started to get dark and unclear around him, like his brain couldn't figure out if it was really there or not. "Keep in touch," he thought he heard Maddy say, and then he faded back into sleep.

  
Ray woke with his hand on his dick. He wasn't hard, he was sticky and satisfied. Maybe he was just unconsciously checking which universe he was in.

Maybe he was going to be waking up like that most mornings, at least for a while. It wasn't the end of the world.

Especially because the person stirring beside him was Fraser—_his_ Fraser. Sleepy and with beautifully messy hair. Ray reached over to mess it up some more.

Fraser pressed warm lips against Ray's shoulder. "Good morning, Ray."

And all of a sudden Ray remembered his dream. Which had been an actual_ dream_ this time, he was pretty sure.

But he was also pretty sure the message was real. Maybe this was how he was going to be able to keep tabs on Rae and Ben, make sure they were doing okay. Maddy, too.

"Rae's back where she belongs," he told Fraser. "With her Ben, in her world. She's happy, they're happy."

"I'm so glad to hear that," Fraser said in a husky voice.

"Because you loved her?"

"Because I care about her, what happens to her." He swallowed. "Whether she's happy."

"And love her."

"Ray..."

"It's okay, Fraser. I'm not going to get bent out of shape over that. He loves me, too. The other Fraser. Ben. I know he does."

"How could he not?"

"Hate to break it to you, but most people don't love me." But Ray was grinning.

"Their loss," Fraser persisted. "But he is me, so of course he loves you."

"Yeah."

Fraser stroked two fingers slowly down Ray's cheek, following his jawline. "I can't help wondering what it was like for you. Being a woman."

"Well, uh, really damn different. I mean, at first. Weird to look in the mirror and see this chick instead of me. But, you know. Inside I was still me, and after a while...I gotta say, not that different after all."

Fraser blinked at him, bemused.

"I was still a detective, I had a case to solve. Most important, I still had you. We were still partners."

"I'm beginning to think we would be in any universe," Fraser said.

"Yeah," Ray said, yawning. It was definitely time for coffee and a shower, in that order. Maybe he could talk Fraser into sharing both with him. "But this is the one I want to be in."

"Yes," Fraser said. "Stay with me."

"Oh, I stick like glue," Ray said. "You know me."

"I do know you, Ray," Fraser said. "You're my partner and my friend. And the love of my life."

Ray grinned so hard his face hurt. "Was that hard to say?"

"Not in the least," Fraser said, and damn if he didn't look happier than Ray had ever seen him.

Ray felt warm all over, like every nerve in his body had suddenly woken up and started singing. A symphony or something, something wonderful, something big and beautiful enough to accompany a limitless future. Not an ABBA tune in the bunch.

He pulled Fraser in and kissed him, figuring the coffee and shower could wait a while. Because he had a day off, and the best guy in the world in his arms.

It was Saturday morning, and Ray Kowalski woke up into his own life for what felt like the first time.

It was good to be him.

It was very, very good.

  
_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Acknowledgments: Beta thanks to Nos4a2no9, AuKestrel, and akamine_chan. More extensive notes and acknowledgments [at my LJ](http://j-s-cavalcante.livejournal.com).  
> Feedback of any kind is gratefully accepted.


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